


the freckles in our eyes are mirror images (and when we kiss they're perfectly aligned)

by cornerkick



Category: Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: F/F, Gen, Grey's Anatomy AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-01-05 14:00:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 105,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21209711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cornerkick/pseuds/cornerkick
Summary: It’s not surprising. Surgery is a boys’ club. She knew that going into it, but she wanted to be as far away from what either of her parents did as possible, and when she first set foot in the OR as a bright-eyed third year medical student who’d had much more sleep, she’d made her choice. And she knew that meant spending a lot of time with buff guys with god complexes.ORThe Grey's Anatomy AU no one asked for.





	1. a hard day's night

**Author's Note:**

> Buckle up, folks, because this one's fixing to be a long haul. 
> 
> Loosely based on Grey's with my own spin to it. Chapters will be named after songs bc Grey's episodes are, too.
> 
> Apologies in advance.

Her alarm doesn’t wake her up. Light streaming through the blinds she must have forgotten to shut the previous night does. She groans, rolls over, and presses her face into her pillow.

And gets a mouthful of hair. Hair that doesn’t belong to her. 

“What the fuck?”

“Morning to you, too.” 

Lindsey doesn’t recognize the woman in bed beside her. That’s not surprising, considering she knows all of four people in Portland, and she’d been really, _ really _drunk last night. The headache pulsating behind her eyes as she sits up too quickly reminds her of that, but she can’t really remember anything else. Her eyes go from the woman half-covered by a sheet in the other side of the bed to the alarm clock.

“Okay,” Lindsey says, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and getting to her feet. The stranger in her bed rolls over, smirks, and quirks an eyebrow while Lindsey shrugs back into a t-shirt that she’s pretty sure is clean. “I’m late, so I’m gonna shower, and when I’m done, you’re gonna be gone.”

“Or,” the blonde in her bed says, drawing out the syllable and flashing her that playful grin again. “You can get back in bed and we can pick up where we left off.” She wiggles her eyebrows almost suggestively and Lindsey wonders how the hell she’d ended up with this person in her bed. She must have been even drunker than she thought. 

“Nope. I’m starting a new job today, so thanks for last night…” She trails off, fumbling when she realizes she doesn’t remember this woman’s name. A blush dusts her cheeks.

“Emily,” Emily says, stifling a laugh and sitting up to stick her hand out for Lindsey to shake. A little dumbfounded and a lot sleepy, Lindsey shakes her hand. There’s a little spark there as they draw apart. 

“Lindsey,” she replies with a shrug.

“Yeah, I remember.” Emily flops heavily back in bed and reaches around for her phone. “Know any coffee places around here? I just moved.”

Lindsey’s already digging in her drawers for clothes for the day and shakes her head over her shoulder. “Me, too.” She bites her bottom lip, but says it anyway. “You can use my coffee maker, if you want, but I really _ do _ have to go to work, so…”

Emily smiles, and it’s softer. “Thanks, buddy. I’ll get out of your hair soon. I have to work, too.”

And that’s that.

\- 

She gets to the OR barely a minute late, but it seems like Dr. Ellis _ notices _ , which is not really how she wants to start off this seven-year marathon. She doesn’t _ say _ anything, so Lindsey slips into the back of the room and hovers, eyes bright as she takes in the state-of-the-art equipment and then sizes up the competition.

There are a lot of dudes. 

It’s not surprising. Surgery is a boys’ club. She knew that going into it, but she wanted to be as far away from what either of her parents did as possible, and when she first set foot in the OR as a bright-eyed third year medical student who’d had much more sleep, she’d made her choice. And she knew that meant spending a lot of time with buff guys with god complexes. 

But the rush she felt in the OR was unlike anything else, and if it made her parents proud of her, then it would be totally worth it. 

Someday.

Right now, as she follows a line of interns who look as lost and confused as she feels to the locker room, she kind of feels like she should have become a teacher for the summers off. 

Methodically, she changes out of her street clothes and into scrubs and tries to ignore how exhausted she already feels. She’s not even an hour into a 48-hour-shift. And she’s still hungover. 

“Hey,” the girl next to her says brightly, taking a seat while Lindsey ties her shoe. “I’m Mal. We talked at the mixer for a sec, I think we’ve got the same resident. Harry something? 

“Oh, yeah. I remember.” She doesn’t, because she’d stayed at that mixer for fifteen minutes before ducking out to catch a movie instead. She doesn’t need to be friends with these people. She just needs to get through residency, then fellowship, then move far, far away from Portland. 

Mal chuckles softly. “You don’t, but that’s fine. You will.” 

That almost seems like a challenge, and it makes Lindsey grin back at her. 

“Hey,” someone says, poking their head through a scrub top that’s a size too-big. “You guys got Harry, too?” She pops her head through the proper hole and blows a few flyaways out of her face. “Me, too. Heard he’s brilliant. I’m Rose.” She says all of this in one breath, and then promptly pulls her hair back in a messy bun. 

“- Horan, Lavelle, Pugh.”

Some guy had been called first, but everyone’s attention turns towards Lindsey when they realize.

“Horan, as in,_ Doctor _ Horan?” Someone whispers, but isn’t very good at it.

Rose, whom Lindsey has literally _ just _ met, scoffs and throws the guy a look. “Yeah, Dr. Horan’s right here.” She jabs her thumb in Lindsey’s direction and stalks down the hallway after the rest of them. Lindsey shoots her a grateful smile. Rose just shrugs, drops her stethoscope, and curses under her breath as she squats to pick it up and catch up with the group.

Harry, as it turns out, is a nickname. 

Dr. Heath is a smiling, easygoing fourth year resident who doesn’t wear her white coat but _ does _ wear a really, really expensive watch. “Hey, guys,” she says, and Lindsey finds her voice oddly soothing. It’s the first time all day she hasn’t felt like her brain is going a mile a minute. “You can call me Tobin, by the way. Let me give you the tour.”   
-

“The tour” consists of Tobin leading the four of them around like a line of baby ducklings while the fourth intern, Russell, stands way too close to Lindsey. Rose seems to notice and wedges her way between them somewhere between the emergency room and the cafeteria, which Lindsey really, _ really _ appreciates. 

He keeps talking about how he went to Harvard like she didn’t graduate top of her class at Yale, and she’s too nice -or too hungover- to point it out. 

Mal, though, who’s apparently memorized their entire class’s biographies, brings it up as they’re huddled around the vending machine half an hour later. “Hey, didn’t you go to Yale?” She says it like she’s not sure, but the look she throws Lindsey says otherwise. Lindsey tries not to flush. She kind of hates being the center of attention, which is funny for a _ doctor _, she knows. 

But, in the OR, though people are focused on her, she gets to zone out and focus on the procedure, and she can’t wait to get there. “Yeah,” she says with a shrug, like it’s nothing. Beside her, Rose scoffs.

“Am I the only non-Ivy here?”

Mal looks apologetic. “Brown,” she says with a wave. 

Russell seems nonplussed. Rose just wrinkles her nose. “God, I’m the coolest one here. 

“You wish,” Russell bites back, but he looks a little bit impressed -and he shuts up for the rest of the tour, which is a nice bonus. Lindsey likes him better when he shuts up. Objectively, he’s cute. But he’s also her coworker, so...she’s not going there. 

“Okay.” Tobin’s got them all huddled up around a creepily abandoned nurses’ station in the rehab section of the hospital. “Russ, I’m gonna need you down in the ER doing sutures. Mal and Rose, you’ve got post-op. And Lindsey, I really hate to do this, but you’re on consults.” She pulls a face at this and rolls her eyes as she hands the pager over to her and starts walking backwards down the hallway.

“I’m on call, but I’ve also got a chole in OR ten in, like, fifteen so...just come find me if you need me.”

And then she’s gone, leaving the four of them standing in the middle of the hallway in an unfamiliar part of the hospital. 

“Well,” Rose says, clapping her hands together. “Let’s get this bread, team! Only,” she pauses to check her watch, which is _ decidedly _ cheaper-looking than Tobin’s. “Forty-five hours to go!” 

“God, it feels like we’ve already been here for a day and a half,” Mal complains, falling into step with Rose and heading, hopefully, towards the post-op floor. Lindsey hovers uncertainly, looking to her right, then to her left, and combing a hand through her hair out of (nervous) habit.

“You lost? Russell jokes, grinning playfully. 

Lindsey straightens her shoulders and turns left. “Nope. I know _ exactly _ where I’m going.” He laughs at her as she heads down the corridor, heading in the opposite direction towards the ER. 

“Whatever you say, Dr. Horan!”

-

As it turns out, Lindsey has no clue where she’s going. 

She winds up on the third floor, in an unfamiliar wing that’s way too brightly colored to be any kind of surgical floor, and as she wheels around, she nearly runs into someone, who throws their hands out to steady her before they both wind up on their asses.

“Whoa,” the person says, drawing out the _ o _ sound and gripping Lindsey’s forearms lightly. “Careful there…” 

It’s Emily. There’s a flash of recognition in her eyes as she realizes that she recognizes Lindsey, but Emily’s not alone. She’s got a group of other people in pink-colored scrubs on either side of her, and Emily just flashes her a grin that makes the corners of her eyes wrinkle gestures to her green scrubs with a tilt of her chin.

“You’re a long way from the surgical floor, Dr…” She makes a show of looking at Lindsey’s nametag and Lindsey kind of feels like she wants to die. “Horan.” There’s another flash of recognition there and Emily blinks at her, eyebrows raised. “You want the fourth floor. Easiest way is down the hall, stairway’s on the right.” She bends her right wrist as she gives the directions. 

“Thanks,” Lindsey says, finally finding her voice and trying to figure out what else to say.

Then her pager buzzes loudly at her hip. Lindsey glances down at it and sighs under her breath. Emily points out the nurses’ station and Lindsey returns the call quickly, nodding along to the nurse on the other end. “Yeah, I’ll be right there.”

“It begins,” Emily says with a shake of her head.

“Yeah.” Lindsey steals a look at _ Emily’s _ badge this time. “Thanks, Dr. Sonnett.” Because they work in the same hospital. They’re not exactly co-workers, but they’re...colleagues, in a way. This should be totally normal, but Lindsey feels her ears burning. 

Emily barks out a laugh. “See you around, Dr. Horan.”

-

By lunchtime, Lindsey is convinced that every other specialty in this hospital is made up of a bunch of idiots. She’s gotten ten consults this morning alone, and none of them have required more than monitoring. She was hoping to see the OR today, but that’s starting to seem more and more unlikely as time passes. She goes through the cafeteria line and robotically finds Mal and Rose already huddled around a table, pouring over a patient’s chart. 

“I,” she declares, flopping heavily into her chair and dropping her tray. “Hate medical interns. What are you guys doing? It’s a marathon, not a sprint.” Lindsey pops open a carton of yogurt and digs in, pointing her empty spoon at the pair of full plates on the other interns’ trays. 

“What do you think about this?” Mal says, sliding the file across the table. Lindsey takes another bite and narrows her eyes at the image in front of her. 

“Well,” she says conversationally. “I’d say it’s interesting that guy’s brain is upside down.”

Rose rolls her eyes and flips the X-ray so Lindsey can see it properly. She points at something with the blunt end of her spoon. “Looks like a bleed to me.”

“See!”

Mal’s squinting. Rose looks like she just won the lottery. “They’re definitely gonna take him to the OR. Wonder if we could get in on that?” 

“They only take one of you into the OR on the first shift.” Emily’s there, in her pink scrubs, and she takes the vacant seat at their table like she owns the place, turning it backwards and sinking into it, her arms crossed loosely over the back of it. She props her chin there and looks at the group with her head tilted slightly. “It’s supposed to breed that competition you surgeons are all about, but I gotta say, I’m lovin’ this bit of girl power here.” 

Emily’s very carefully not looking at Lindsey, keeping her attention on Mal and Rose, but _ Lindsey _ is staring at _ Emily _pretty blankly. 

She doesn’t know what pink scrubs mean. Their employee handbook had a detailed list of what all of the different colored scrubs mean, but Lindsey had more important things to read about, like how often she’d be on call and how many weekends she was going to have to work (spoiler alert: all of them). But she can gather clues. There are stickers on her badge, little stars and a moon, and her badge holder is Mickey Mouse’s face. The stethoscope draped around her neck has a smaller bell than Lindsey’s does. 

“Who are you?” Rose asks bluntly, and Emily just sticks out her hand. Lindsey is thrown back into her bed, this morning, and has to shake her head to bring herself back to the cafeteria instead of her bedroom. 

“Dr. Sonnett, peds, but most people just call me Emily.” This is when Emily decides to look over to Lindsey, and her smile turns into more of a smirk as she reaches over to steal a fry off of Lindsey’s plate like they’re friends or something.

Lindsey doesn't know _ what _ they are, but she’s pretty sure they’re not friends. 

“Are you an intern?” Mal asks skeptically. Emily _ does _ seem way more relaxed than the rest of them. Lindsey can’t tell if it’s because she’s older or if it’s just because her specialty isn’t as cutthroat. 

“Yep, I’m new, too. First day. It’s exciting, right? We’re _ doctors _ now.” 

_ Exciting _ is one word for it. Lindsey kind of feels like she might throw up, but it’s hard to tell if that’s because she’s still a little hungover or because she’s terrified of screwing up and accidentally killing someone. The look on Mal’s face makes it seem like she feels the same way. 

Rose, though, just clicks her tongue and says “How do you know only one surgical intern sees the OR, then?”

“Reddit,” Emily replies with a shrug, like it’s the most obvious answer in the world. The three of them blink at her. “Come on! You guys didn’t Reddit the programs you ranked? Oh, guys, you really should have…This one’s not bad, though! The hours suck, but all surgical residencies suck. The training’s top notch, though. Once you’re done, I’d totally let any of you take out my appendix.” 

She’s eating more of Lindsey’s fries, so Lindsey pulls her tray a bit closer. “Where’s your lunch?”

“Oh, I already ate, but I figured I’d come say hi.” Mal and Rose exchange a look and then both glance towards Lindsey, an unspoken question hanging between them. Emily answers it before Lindsey has to, which is good, because Lindsey’s brain is working like a PC from 1998 today. “After you got lost in peds today, I wanted to make sure you found your way to the caf. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, so we all gotta fuel up.” 

“You got lost on peds?”

“Look,” Lindsey says, exhaling heavily. “This hospital’s huge. I don’t have every wing memorized yet.”

“You could’ve _ asked _ ,” Mal says, because of _ course _ she has the floorplan memorized, too. 

Lindsey’s pager goes off and then Emily’s goes off, and then Mal’s goes off. They all sigh in unison and get to their feet.

“See you guys around!” Emily says, grabbing a couple more fries before disappearing.

“That was _ weird _, right?” Rose asks as soon as she’s gone. 

Russell appears seemingly out of nowhere and agrees. “Yeah,” he nods. “Peds and surgery? Don’t mix. It’s a soft specialty. 

Lindsey rolls her eyes and starts walking back towards post-op.

“Hey, only thirty-five hours to go!” Rose calls after her. She thinks it’s supposed to be reassuring, but it just makes Lindsey want to find an empty on-call room and go to bed.

-

When Lindsey gets to room 307, Emily’s already there. It makes Lindsey pause and double-check her pager, but it’s there, clear as day: 307. Emily’s perched on the radiator beside the patient’s bed, arms crossed loosely, still smiling, though it’s a more tentative one than Lindsey’s seen before. 

“-need to see what they want to do with you, Danny.” Then, she turns her gaze on Lindsey, who’s still hanging near the door looking lost. “Hey, Doc, did you get a chance to look at Danny boy’s films, or did you run all the way here?” There’s a playful lilt to her voice that might have made Lindsey bristle if one of the other surgery interns were using it, but with Emily, it just seems like she’s having a good time, which is...kind of weird, since they’re at work, but she doesn’t have time to figure that out right now. _ She’s at work. _ She needs to focus. 

“No I- I came right here.” Tobin had said to run when the pager went off. It only occurs to Lindsey now that she might not have been totally serious. She steps further into the room and sees that the kid in the bed has to be about eight, and kind of looks like shit. 

“That’s good, because I’m pretty sure Danny’s appendix is trying to take him out before he gets a chance to play in the winter basketball tournament, but we’re not gonna let that happen. Right, Dr. Horan?” Emily’s practically feeding her the answers, here, and Lindsey just kind of nods.

“Hey, Danny,” she says, stepping to the side of the bed not occupied by Emily and tucking her hands into her pockets. “I’m Dr. Horan. Your stomach bothering you?” This is weird. She can’t remember the last time she saw a kid as a patient, and it’s been almost as long since she’s really talked to a patient like this. Usually, medicine takes care of this part, and they just cut. She’d spent the last half of her fourth year of med school doing surgical rotations and subspecialties, so this feels a little bit foreign to her. 

“I feel like I’m gonna-” 

It’s about then that Lindsey realizes why Emily’s safely sitting above the floor. Danny throws up all over Lindsey’s shoes, and she can only smile through it and say “We’ll take care of it.” 

Emily hops off of the radiator and follows her out of the room, arm loose around Lindsey’s shoulders. “Fever of 103, white count’s 20, and the ultrasound’s pretty conclusive. If you wanna clean up first, there’s a shower in our locker room.”

“You could’ve warned me,” Lindsey complains, kicking her foot and grimacing. She has spare shoes in her locker downstairs. She shrugs Emily’s arm off. 

“What fun would _ that _ be?” Emily’s face turns serious in a split second and she thumbs over her shoulder. “Hey, can you talk with Heath and make sure this kid gets put on the schedule? We don’t wanna risk a rupture, and I kinda promised him we’d play Smash tonight after.” 

“I’ll talk to her.”  
  
“Thanks, Linds, and, hey, if you’re lucky, you’ll get in on it!”

“Dr. Horan,” Lindsey calls back over her shoulder. When Emily tips her head to the side, she adds “When we’re at work.” Emily smiles and nods, like she gets it.

Lindsey knows they won’t see each other _ outside _ of work anyway, so it doesn’t _ really _ matter.

-

Tobin’s in surgery. 

Lindsey doesn’t scrub, just ties her hair back and grabs a surgical mask, steps inside and blinks at the indie music blaring over the speakers. Tobin’s far enough along in her training that there’s only an attending in the gallery, keeping an eye on things, but letting her do her thing. She’s got a second year scrubbed in beside her to assist, and Lindsey cannot _ wait _to get her hands in there. 

“Dr. Heath,” she says, and with the mask, it’s barely audible over the music. Tobin looks up anyway, arches her eyebrows behind her shield, and lifts the hand not inside of someone’s abdominal cavity to gesture for the nurse to kill the music. 

“What’s up?” Tobin asks, looking away to finish up her suture. She must’ve already gotten the gallbladder. 

“There’s a kid up on three with appendicitis. Fever, leukocytosis, and getting more dehydrated by the minute. Peds wants us to intervene.” 

There’s a twitch to Tobin’s lips behind her surgical mask when she says “Of course she does.” Lindsey isn’t sure what Tobin means, but doesn’t really care enough to ask. “We’ll do it after this. Let Barry know.”

“Okay.”

“And Horan? You’re scrubbing. I have to be able to step out if I need to.”

“Okay.” Lindsey’s smiling, and Tobin can definitely tell, but she doesn’t say anything. She just tells the nurse to put the music back on and gets back to work. 

-

“Hey!” Emily’s in the scrub room, for some reason, without the booties and hair net that’s really required for her to be down here. It doesn’t look like she cares. Lindsey’s washing her hands, eyes on the timer on the sink.

“You lost?” Lindsey tries to joke, annoyed by how her voice is a little bit shaky. This is what she’s meant to _ do _. She wishes she weren’t nervous. Emily comes to stand beside her, though she leaves a little bit of space so she doesn’t have to re-scrub. They look through the window where Danny’s being prepped for surgery. He looks really small on the operating table. Lindsey swallows around a lump in her throat. 

“Nah, I’m right where I need to be. Can you do something for me?”

“Depends what it is.” Lindsey’s a little bit wary of her. If she’s in the surgical area without proper attire, she’s not sure what else Emily Sonnett is capable of. 

“Just, tell him Emily called Kirby. He’ll know what I mean.”

“You can go in there, you know, if you get the right stuff on.” 

Emily shakes her head, takes a step or two back, and holds her hands up. “Nah, I think you should tell him. He already thinks I’m awesome, and _ you’re _ the one who’s gonna be cutting him open in-” She looks down at her watch, which Lindsey notices has Mickey Mouse on the clock face. “-ten minutes.” 

Lindsey feels like she’s gonna throw up again, but finishes washing her hands and nods. “Fine, I’ll tell him.”

“Thanks, bud! See you after? You’re gonna kill it!” Emily winces slightly and shakes her head, backtracking. “Not literally. You’re gonna save it! Anyway, good luck, have fun!” Then she’s gone, and Lindsey is left to step into the operating room, as a doctor, for the first time.

The first thing she notices is that it’s freezing in there. The second thing she notices is that Danny’s still awake, and that he’s staring at her. Careful to keep her hands sterile, she walks around to the head of the bed and tries to offer him a smile from behind her mask. “Hey, Danny. How we doing?”

“Cold,” he says, and Lindsey has to agree. In a quieter voice, he says, “Scared.” Lindsey’s heart kind of breaks at that. She wishes she hadn’t scrubbed yet so that she could take his hand. Instead, she just nods.

“Yeah, my boss is kind of an ice queen, so we keep it cool for her. Sorry about that.” It gets a little smile out of the kid, so Lindsey keeps talking. “Hey, Em told me to tell you that she calls Kirby for your game tonight. Sorry, dude.” Danny’s lips turn in a pout as he starts talking about how he _ called it _ , and that’s when the anesthesiologist gives Lindsey a look like _ get on with it _.

“Hey, Danny_ , _ one of my friends is going to put you to sleep with some gas, okay?” His face is white as a sheet and he looks in her direction when the respiratory therapist puts the mask over his nose and mouth. “Hey, bud, can you tell me about...about the last movie you saw in the theater? I saw the one about the clown, which was pretty scary, actually…” Maybe she shouldn’t have been telling the kid about to go under anesthesia about _ It, _ but now _ she _ was panicking a little bit, too. 

But then Danny’s talking about _ The Lion King _ and he drifts off and Lindsey can finish getting scrubbed.

And that’s when she realizes it: that was the _ easy _ part.

-

“I can’t _ believe _ she lucked into a surgery,” Russell grumbles, sinking down in a seat and tearing open a bag of popcorn. He chews thoughtfully as the nurses prep the patient down below.

“She didn’t _ luck into _ it. She got consulted and, surprise, the patient _ actually needed surgery _,” Rose replies, taking the seat beside him and reaching for a handful of popcorn. She tosses a few kernels overhead and catches them, watching Lindsey get gowned and stand with her hands clasped off to the side, away from anything that might contaminate her. 

“Fifty bucks says Heath has to step in before she gets the appendix out,” Russell says.

“I’ll take that bet,” Rose replies. “I don’t even think she’ll get past the peritoneum. She’s nervous, look at her hands.”

Mal frowns at them from the back and leans forward a bit. “You guys, be nice. She’s one of us. I hope she does great.”

Emily’s just gotten to the gallery, and she’s sitting in the back corner wearing a too-big hoodie over her scrubs because it’s freezing down here. “You don’t have to hope. She’s gonna get it just right. I’ll bet you a hundred bucks.” Russell snorts around a mouthful of popcorn as Emily pulls her feet up onto her chair. “Each.”

“Hey, I’m not betting against her,” Mal insists, but Rose and Russell both shrug. Rose shakes Emily’s hand and Russell just says _ deal _.

Forty-five minutes later, Lindsey’s closing without incident, and Emily holds out her palm with a smug smile.

“I’ll Venmo you,” Rose says, pulling up the app on her phone.

Russell’s already halfway out the door. “It was a joke, Peds. I obviously wasn’t putting money on a surgeon fucking up.”

“Would it have been a joke if she had?” Emily wonders with a shrug. 

“Of course.” The answer’s a beat too late, and Rose gives Emily a sidelong glance as she gets up. 

“Your money’s there. Don’t tell Horan about this.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

-

Twenty minutes later, Lindsey’s outside in the parking lot throwing up her dinner. 

It had gone well. Better than expected, actually. Tobin hadn’t even had to step in at all, and she’d told Lindsey she’d done well as soon as they’d gotten out of surgery, but Lindsey had honestly felt like she’d been watching the entire procedure happen from the gallery, like it had been somebody else operating on Danny. 

The adrenaline rush of surgery is still thrumming in her veins, and Tobin had been there, so it had definitely been Lindsey operating, but it was scary that she’d zoned out so much that she could barely remember it. What if she’d fucked it up? What if she’d cut too deep and Danny bled out and-

“Are you okay?” Rose sounds like she doesn’t really want to know the answer, but the way her eyebrows are pulled together give her away. “You just crushed the first operation of the year. What are you doing out here?”

“Just...needed some air,” Lindsey answers. “It’s stuffy in there. You’ll see.”

“Hopefully.” 

“Definitely.” 

A kind-of-awkward silence hangs between them. Rose digs the toe of her sneaker into the sidewalk. “Tobin’s _ gushing _ over you. It’s disgusting.”

“She’s just glad she didn’t have to do any work.” Lindsey pulls her coat more tightly around her shoulders and heads back into the hospital. “Hey, don’t tell anybody about this. Ever.”

“Sure, sure. Twenty-eight hours left.”

-

“Oh, come on, the Pokémon trainer is _ basically _ like having _ three _ characters, so it’s not really fair.”

“You _ stole _ Kirby from me, so it’s only fair!” Danny’s sitting up in his hospital bed, propped up by three pillows, a popsicle hanging from the corner of his mouth. Emily’s sitting cross-legged in the armchair by his bed, also eating a popsicle. They’re both holding Switch controllers and staring at the television when Lindsey walks in.

“Hey, Doc,” Emily says, glancing away for a fraction of a second. It’s all it takes for Danny to finish off a combo, and then the round ends. “Oh, come _ on. _” She glares at Lindsey, though it doesn’t reach her eyes. “You made me lose!”

“Nice job, Dan,” Lindsey says, stepping further into the room and giving him a little wave. “How ya feeling?”

He pops the popsicle out of his mouth and grins at her. “Good! Sorry I threw up on you before.”

“It’s all good.”

“You wanna play? We have another controller.” 

It’s tempting. Emily holds the controller out to her and wiggles her eyebrows. Lindsey goes to take it, just as her pager goes off. Lindsey groans. “Duty calls,” Emily says with a shake of her head. 

“Yeah. I’ll see you tomorrow.” As she goes to answer the page, Lindsey’s struck with the thought that she’s not really sure whether she was talking to Danny or Emily.

Emily’s not really sure, either. 

-

The nurses paged her because a post-op patient had a fever and no standing Tylenol orders, so Lindsey checks on him and orders the usual: chest X-ray, urine and blood cultures, and places the order for the Tylenol herself. 

Then, she goes to find the others. 

They’ve claimed an area in the hospital basement as their home base. The surgery lounge is always full of upper years, and they claim all of the on-call rooms, too. This stretch of hallway has a row of windows at the top of the wall so they can get a sliver of daylight if they find the right time of day, and there are a bunch of gurneys down here so they can lounge or, if they’re lucky, nap.

Rose and Mal are sharing one with patient charts spread out between them. Russell’s asleep on another one. Lindsey throws her jacket at him as she arrives, flopping heavily onto one of the empty stretchers and sprawling out on her back.

This thing,” she says, unclipping the pager from her waist and miming throwing it down the corridor. “Is the bane of my existence.” 

“At least you got to _ smell _ the OR,” Rose says, rolling her eyes and leaning back against the wall.

"She got to do more than that,” Mal argues, throwing a bag of chips to Lindsey, who gratefully tears it open and eats a few. “She got to _ remove someone’s appendix _. How cool is that?”

“Not that cool.” Russell is, apparently, not asleep anymore. He sits up, a crease pressed into his cheek from the gurney. “It’s a pretty standard procedure.”

“And one you haven’t done yet,” Rose points out.

“No one’s done it. Except Horan.” He stands and wanders over to the vending machines nestled in the corner and tries to finagle it into giving him a free soda. It doesn’t work, and he digs around for some spare change. “Yet.” He flashes them a smirk.

“Yeah, well, _ I _think it’s pretty cool. How was it?”

“Pretty cool,” Lindsey agrees. She and Rose lock eyes, but Rose doesn’t say anything. 

Lindsey finishes her chips and then rolls onto her stomach. “If this thing goes off, will one of you wake me up? I’m dying.”

“Sure.”

-

She gets two hours of sleep before the pager goes off, and it wakes all four of them. “Shut it _ off _, Lindsey,” Russel whines from a few gurneys down, and Lindsey fumbles for the pager she’d set aside, knocks it to the ground, and swears loudly. She rolls to her feet and collects it, silencing it and walking a few feet down the hallway to check and see what it is before taking off at a run.

It’s a 911 page. For Danny. 

Her heart is somewhere in her throat by the time she gets to 307, and Emily’s already there, because of course she is. “Hey, bud, you gotta relax for us, it’s gonna be fine, look, Lindsey’s here.” Lindsey’s halfway to correcting her when she sees the look in Emily’s eyes, and ignores it in favor of getting to Danny’s side. 

“Hey. What’s going on?”

“He popped the stitches jumping on the bed.” Lindsey gives her a look like _ why weren’t you _ ** _watching_ ** _ him?!?! _ and Emily says “I do have other patients, you know.” Lindsey sighs and reaches for Danny’s hospital gown, which is brown in places because of the blood. She’d thrown a line of simple interrupted sutures to the skin, and they’d been good, Tobin had even said so, but jumping on the bed could do that. 

“I can fix that,” Lindsey says with a tight smile. “I’m gonna need a suture kit and some lidocaine. Size 7 gloves. You guys got that up here?”

“Yeah, but you should probably use the freeze spray first.”

“...the what?”

“Stay with D-man. I’ll be right back.”

“...did you beat her again after I left?” Lindsey asks, and Danny grins.

“Three times.”

Lindsey grins back. Emily reappears with the supplies and Lindsey puts on her gloves. “So, Danny, Lindsey’s gonna sew you back up -you know, like when your teddy bear got a rip and your mom put a patch on it? Just like that. And I’m gonna sit here and hold your hand, and after, we’re all gonna have a popsicle.” She hands Lindsey a can of cold spray and she shakes it a few times before spraying it on Danny’s skin. He squeals, and Lindsey pauses, worry creasing her brow. But then the kid’s laughing through a couple tears that have escaped, and Emily’s laughing, so Lindsey laughs, nervously, too and settles into the chair beside Danny’s bed.

“Okay, Danny, I’m gonna have to use a needle here, so it’s gonna burn for a second…” Emily gives her a meaningful look. Lindsey doesn’t know what she wants her to say. 

“...but it’s gonna make the rest of this hurt less, okay? You can squeeze my hand as tight as you want. Count to three, Lindsey.”

She counts, then injects the lidocaine, and Danny hisses and squeezes Emily’s hand so hard she’s kind of worried it might break, but Emily keeps her face neutral. “Okay, buddy, I’m gonna start doing the stitches now.”

“Let her know if you feel anything, okay?”

“Okay.”

Lindsey re-does the stitches, being careful to tie them tightly, and tests them before she cuts the ends. “Okay,” she says once she’s done, pulling off her gloves and tossing her supplies back into the kit. “All done.”

“Whoa, not bad, huh Danny?”

“I didn’t even feel it.”

“Nice job, Dr. Horan.” Emily’s voice sounds like it’s back to normal now, and she extricates her hand from Danny’s before following Lindsey out into the hallway. “Hey! Don’t you want your popsicle?”

“Honestly,” she says between a yawn. “I just wanna sleep. I barely got an hour earlier before this thing went off." 

Emily bites her lip, gestures down the hall. “Look, there are only twelve of us, and my chief and I are the only ones here overnight, so if you wanna crash in our on-call room...I won’t tell if you won’t.” Lindsey considers it, thinks about how there’s _ definitely _ no beds in _ their _ on-call rooms, and feels the ache in her shoulders and neck from standing too much. 

“...that’d be great, actually. Thanks.” 

-

It turns out that there are _ three _ on-call rooms up here, one for each year, and Emily’s the only intern here overnight. There’s a television mounted to the wall, a desk with scattered books and a computer on it, and several posters taped up. There’s a set of bunk beds against one wall. “Home sweet home,” Emily declares, sweeping her arm around the small space. “Top bunk’s mine.”

“Okay,” Lindsey says, kicking her shoes off and sliding into the bottom bunk. As soon as her head hits the pillow, she’s drifting off. 

“Do you care if I put something stupid on TV? I usually need some background noise to sleep.” 

It’s a little weird if Lindsey thinks too hard about it. It’s the second night in a row that they’re sleeping together, but in very different ways. When Lindsey realizes she hasn’t said anything, she manages a gruff, “Go ahead.”

She falls asleep to a F.R.I.E.N.D.s rerun.

And wakes up to another page. Emily groans somewhere above her and Lindsey rolls onto her feet and silences it. “Sorry. Thanks for the nap.”

“Anytime.” Emily amends that as Lindsey’s trying to tie her shoes. “Actually, how about anytime you’re not the one holding _ that _ thing?”

“Don’t you guys have pagers?”

“Yeah, but _ we _ take care of our patients.”

“Screw you, Sonnett." 

“...didn’t you already do that?” 

Lindsey’s glad it’s dark in here. She disappears before Emily can see her blush.

-

By rounds the next morning, Lindsey’s dragging. The pages hadn’t stopped all night. The post-op patient had a bad infection, so she had to start antibiotics. One of the pre-op patients spiked a temperature, so she had to figure out why. There was a code blue she stumbled into around four a.m. And, just before rounds, they got consulted on a trauma patient. It was all neurology related, though, so they were taking an upper year resident into the procedure...which Lindsey wasn’t even that upset about, because she was so damn tired.

Her feet are dragging when she meets Tobin on peds. “Hey. How was your night?” Tobin’s grinning. She’s pretty much always grinning, actually, and she stifles a laugh as she gives her shoulder a light squeeze. “First night’s always rough, but, hey, you survived! Only about a billion more calls to go.”

Lindsey groans, but she got to hand the consult pager off to Rose an hour ago, so she _ does _ feel a little bit lighter. “So, what’s up with our little dude?”

“His stitches popped last night so I had to redo them at like 12 a.m.” Tobin quirks a brow. “But no fevers overnight and he’s eating popsicles like a champ, so…”

“Cool, we can probably sign off, then.”

“You’re not signing off before we decide to discharge again, are you Dr. Heath?” The peds team is heading towards them and Lindsey notices Emily, first, though the woman Tobin’s talking to catches her attention next, if only because of the way Tobin’s smile, if possible, gets _ bigger _ when their eyes meet. 

“Well, Dr. Press, I don’t know what else we’re really going to do…”

Lindsey catches Emily’s eye and arches her eyebrows. Emily just winks at her. “Well, you _ could _ monitor your post-op patients for more than 12 hours, maybe. But I’m not telling you how to do your job…”

“Kinda sounds like you are, though.” Tobin leans against the counter of the nurses’ station and cocks her head to the side. “How long are you planning on keeping him?”

“He’ll go home this evening, probably, but I’d appreciate if your team kept an eye on him until then.”

Tobin considers this, shrugs, and tips her chin towards Lindsey. “Dr. Horan will handle it. Let her know if you need anything.” And with that, Tobin’s walking off, but not without looking back and calling out, “See you later, Chris." 

Emily squeezes Lindsey’s elbow, and she nearly jumps a foot in the air. “Hey,” Emily says, handing her a styrofoam cup of coffee. “Drink up. You look dead in the eyes, and it’s only day 2.”

“What is this?” Lindsey takes a sip and hums thoughtfully. The vanilla latte’s perfect, and she doesn’t know how Emily’s knew.

“You had vanilla creamer in the fridge, so I guessed. See ya later!” 

-

Lindsey, blissfully, gets to spend the rest of the day in the ER doing stitches. She even got a nap in during the afternoon. She was finishing up her twelfth laceration repair when the clock struck the magical hour of 5 a.m. She finishes up her stitches, washes her hands, and walks, zombie-like, back to the locker room with thoughts of her bed dancing in her head. 

“Lindsey,” Rose says as soon as she sweeps into the room. “You’re a black cloud. I slept four hours last night.” She hands the pager off to the next victim from one of the other intern groups and stretches her arms over her head. 

“I hate you,” Lindsey says, stifling another yawn. 

“Buck up, babe, we’re going to Joe’s after this since we’re all off til tomorrow morning.”

“Who’s Joe?”

Rose laughs, but Mal takes pity on her. “It’s the bar across the street,” she says helpfully. Before Lindsey can asks, she continues with “It’s basically open 24 hours because...well, doctors.” Lindsey thinks about the last time she drank, and shakes her head.

“I think I’m just gonna go home and go to bed.” 

“Don’t be a pussy, Lindsey,” Russell says from the next row. “All bark, no bite, huh?”

“Fuck off, Russell.” Lindsey changes back into her jeans and sweater and throws her hair up in a bun to keep it out of her face. “Fine. One drink.” 

“I’ll even buy,” he says, so she kind of _ has _ to go. 

Joe’s bar is kind of a dump. It’s dimly lit and grimy, with an ancient jukebox in one corner, a pool table taking up most of the space, and a sticky, wooden bartop. The bartender today is Joe himself, and he seems amused when he sees a group of four walking in from across the street. 

“What can I get you?” Lindsey just orders a beer, but Russell gets them all shots.

“We have to celebrate surviving the first monster shift,” he explains, lifting his shot as its placed in front of him. They all mirror him and Mal winces as hers goes down, but Rose takes hers like a champ and orders another other. Lindsey flips the shot glass and pulls her glass towards her. She’s going to drink this as fast as possible and go home and sleep for ten hours. 

She’s about halfway through her drink when Emily hops onto the bar stool beside hers. “Hey,” she says with a smile, ordering herself a drink and promptly turning towards Lindsey. Their knees are touching, but Lindsey’s trying not to think about it. “You made it! Proud of you.”

Lindsey takes a drink and turns towards Emily, who’s wearing a soft t-shirt that Lindsey kind of wishes _ she _ was wearing instead of her itchy sweater. “For making it to the bar?” 

“Well,” Emily says, accepting her drink from the bartender and lifting it in a toast. Lindsey clinks her glass against Emily’s. “I _ meant _ for making it through your first shift, but being here is cool, too.” 

“I’m leaving after this beer,” Lindsey says.

“Okay,” Emily says, taking a sip of her drink. “Nobody’s stopping you. I should probably go to bed, too.”

“Probably.”

“Hey, I had fun last night.”

“I don’t even remember last night.” 

Emily blinks. “You don’t remember suturing up a kid’s stomach after her broke it open jumping on the bed?” 

Lindsey’s cheeks burn. Her sense of time is so off from the 48 that she doesn’t even realize Emily’s not talking about sleeping together -_ sleeping together _ sleeping together- until it’s too late. Emily reaches over to brush her thumb lightly across Lindsey’s cheek and tries (and fails) to hide a laugh. “Oh, dude, you’re _ so _ out of it. It’s cute.” Lindsey blushes harder. 

“Shut up.” 

“Make me.”

Lindsey’s just about to quip back when Russell shows up on her other side, offers to buy her another drink because hers is gone. Emily’s smile falters, only for a second, but Lindsey sees it. She also shakes her head and slides a couple of dollars across the bar as a tip. 

“I’m going to bed,” she announces, getting to her feet and sidestepping Russell. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”

“Hey, Horan,” Emily says, hopping off of her stool and taking a couple of steps after her. “Can I get your number?” Lindsey stares at her, and this time _ Emily _feels a blush creeping up her neck. “In case I have surgical questions and you’re off. Duh.”

Lindsey knows that’s not the real reason why Emily wants her number, and maybe she sees Russell’s eyes on them as she holds her hand out for Emily’s phone. She keys her number into the phone and hands it back. Their fingers brush and Lindsey tries not to think about it. “Call me.”

“I’m more of a texter, actually.”

“Whatever.”

-

Lindsey goes home. She climbs in bed. She sleeps for ten hours.

Then she wakes up the next morning, and does it all again.


	2. how to save a life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for the feedback on chapter one! I didn't expect so much love, but I really, really appreciate it.
> 
> This has one plot line lifted almost directly from an episode but the rest is just...me. Don't worry if you've never seen the show because I'm trying to make it easy to follow for anyone.
> 
> Unbeta'd, so all mistakes are mine. 
> 
> (As a teaser, you're gonna get some stuff from Emily's perspective next chapter, I think, so that's something to look forward to.)

Lindsey posts the ad for roommates on the bulletin board in one of the waiting rooms on a Saturday night, after her shift ends. She’s off Sunday and spends the day off doing all of the things she hasn’t done in weeks: grocery shopping, laundry, and calling her mom, who keeps her on the phone for nearly two hours talking about Mike and his wife and trying not to ask whether or not Lindsey’s started dating again. Lindsey spends half the call trying very hard not to think about Emily.

She spends the other half of the call /actually/ thinking about Emily. 

When she hangs up on her mother, she wants to text her, but realizes, as she’s scrolling through her contacts, that while _Emily_ has _her_ number, Lindsey doesn’t have Emily’s.

And that Emily hasn’t called or texted her, either. 

She’s about to do something really stupid when her phone vibrates and a text comes through.

**Russell:** _hey_

Three little dots appear and Lindsey goes back to rummaging around in the fridge for something to eat. Her phone vibrates again, three times in quick succession.

**Russell:** _did u no that on weekends the call rooms are mostly empty? ;)_  
**Russell:** _also_  
**Russell:** _got 2 amputate a dude’s finger 2day. _

Unsolicited surgery pics roll through next, but Lindsey’s got to admit they’re a lot better than the other unsolicited photos Russell has sent her way. Armed with a carton of ice cream and a spoon, she sprawls out on her couch and scrolls through the pictures, head tilted a bit to get a better angle. 

The last photo actually is of his dick, so Lindsey leaves him on read. 

God, she thinks, pulling up Netflix and taking a bite of her ice cream. She’s _so bored_. She needs roommates to keep things interesting...and pay ⅔ of the rent.

-

By the time Monday morning rolls around, Lindsey has 100 voicemails and several text message inquiring about the spare bedrooms in her house. 99 of them are from people she’d sooner kill than share her personal space with. 

One of them is from Emily. 

Lindsey stares blankly at the messages on the screen. The first is just a banana emoji. The second says: _if ur still lookin for roommates my lease is up this month_

Lindsey ignores it as she walks into work, planning on ignoring her for a while. She’s still not sure what they are, but she’d thought they were more than just potential roommates. Emily deserves to wait a little bit. Besides, there are plenty of other prospective roommates. 

Two of whom sandwich her as soon as she stops in front of the elevator. Mal and Russell stand on either side of Lindsey, trying to look casual and failing miserably. 

“Morning!” Mal says brightly, holding out a cup of coffee that Lindsey takes, even though she /knows/ this is a bribe. She takes a sip and bites her tongue. The fact that Mal takes her coffee black is so weird to Lindsey, who prefers a little bit of coffee in her creamer. “Oops,” Mal winces, trading their cups. This one tastes a little less like coffee grounds, so Lindsey doesn’t mind it as much. 

“So, Horan,” Russell says as the three of them wait for the elevator. He’s trying to be nonchalant, but there’s a certain tone to his voice that Lindsey doesn’t really like. He’s also standing way too close to her, so Lindsey takes a step to her left, right into Mal’s space, and Mal just switches the hand holding her coffee, drapes an arm loosely over her shoulders. 

Russell still doesn’t stop talking. “We saw your flyer, and, hey, don’t make that face. What’s wrong with Mal and me?”

“There’s nothing wrong with Mal,” Lindsey says, pausing to take a long sip of coffee while Russell’s jaw clenches. “Or you,” she acquiesces with a little half-shrug, effectively knocking Mal’s arm off of her shoulders. “But I don’t really wanna _live_ with you guys. We spend enough time together as it is.”

Mal pouts a little and Lindsey gives her a sympathetic look. “I just want my home to be a place I don’t _have_ to think about work, if I don’t want to. You understand.”

“Yeah.” Russell sighs. “Don’t shit where you eat.” The elevator dings and Russell steps in first, followed by Mal. Lindsey doesn’t budge, just drinks her coffee quietly. “But you should think about it! We’re really-” The elevator doors click shut before he can finish and Lindsey reaches up to massage her temples.

“Careful, Linds,” Emily says, sidling up beside her and gripping the straps of her backpack loosely. “Your face’ll stick like that if you’re not careful.”

“Okay, Mom.”

“If that’s what you’re into.” Lindsey blushes and Emily laughs and reaches for the too-bitter coffee with one hand and passes off a vanilla latte. Lindsey savors that first sip and glances at her watch, huffing under her breath as the elevator takes its time getting back to them. “There are stairs right over there.” Emily jabs her thumb in the direction of the glass staircase in the center of the lobby. Technically, Lindsey is going to be late if she waits for the elevator but, technically, Tobin won’t even set foot in the hospital for an hour, so she feels safe in her decision to stay beside Emily.

At least until Emily opens her mouth again. “So,” she draws out the _o_ and shifts her weight to her back foot. When she does it, her sneaker nudges Lindsey’s, which Lindsey is adamantly ignoring. “You left me on read. I’m hurt, Lindsey.”

“You only texted because you wanna sleep in my spare bedroom,” Lindsey shoots back. The elevator opens and Emily walks inside, sticks her foot out between the doors to keep them open as Lindsey continues standing there and staring at her. 

“You’re looking for roommates and I’m looking for a place. Was I supposed to ignore it just because we slept together?” 

Lindsey’s eyes widen and she looks around, suddenly guilty, like they’re the only consenting adults in this hospital who do that sort of thing. And, really, it was _one time_, so she shouldn’t be reacting so much. 

“You were supposed to text me _before_ I posted a flyer asking for roommates.” 

Emily pulls her foot back and the elevator doors snap shut.

Lindsey’s definitely late, now.

-

“Hey, if you want the cool cases, you have to get here early, baby,” Rose chirps, standing on one of the benches in the locker room and holding a patient file above her head, and just out of Russell’s reach. 

“We all know,” Russell’s saying as she trades his long-sleeved tee for scrubs. His voice goes all muffly when he pulls the shirt over his head. “That Lindsey’s Heath’s favorite, so you lost sleep for nothing. Congratulations.”

Lindsey walks in, knocks her shoulder into Russell’s, and flips him off. “Not true, and even if it was, it’s not because of my name.”

“Keep thinking that, Princess.” 

“He’s just mad he hasn’t got to cut more than a lap chole yet,” Rose says, rolling her eyes and plopping onto the bench beside Lindsey as she changes and pulls her hair back. “But, come on, this guy has pancreatic cancer. He’s definitely getting a whipple. You know you want in.”

“Are you trying to bribe me into letting you crash in one of my spare rooms?”

“Depends,” Rose replies, handing the file over. “Is it working?” Lindsey shrugs. It’s been a minute since she’s been in the OR for anything other than delivering blood or a message to someone more important than her. Her fingers are /itching/ to do something, even if that means holding a retractor for two hours while someone else does the fun stuff. If she even gets to close, that’d be enough to give her the familiar rush of adrenaline and remind her that her life doesn’t totally suck.

“I’m taking the whipple,” Lindsey announces and Russell groans. Mal just shrugs. She’s got the pager today, so she’s just hoping for something cool to roll through the door...and maybe some sleep. 

“Okay, fine, let’s make a bet.”

Lindsey groans. “The last time you made a bet you didn’t pay up,” Rose grumbles at Russell, who narrows his eyes. 

“What bet?” Mal asks, stretching her arms over her head. 

“Whoever gets the coolest surgery gets Lindsey’s spare room.”

“_Lindsey_ doesn’t remember agreeing to this.”

“You got the whipple. If nobody else sees the OR, you automatically get to choose your roommate.”

“Imagine a world where I _don’t_ get to choose my own roommate.”

“Sounds like a bad dystopian novel.” Mal shakes her head. 

“Come on. We have twelve hours. Let’s see who gets the coolest thing, and if it’s yours, we’ll shut up about it. Right, Mal?”

“Hey, I only asked once!”

“I didn’t even ask. You assumed.”

“If it gets you to shut up,” Lindsey murmurs, heading for the door. “Try and get the coolest surgery.”

-

Robert Hodges is only fifty-six. He has kind eyes, salt-and-pepper hair, and twin four-year-old grandsons climbing all over him when Lindsey walks into his hospital room. He’s also the color of the yellow highlighters she used to coat her textbooks in during medical school. 

“Mr. Hodges?” She offers a tight-lipped smile. “I’m Dr. Horan. I’m here to get some blood. Would that be okay?”

“Sure,” the patient speaks at the same time one of his grandkids did.

“Are you a vampire?” One of the boys asks her, his blue eyes wide and bright. 

“Mhm,” Lindsey replies easily, putting on her gloves and hooking up a few tubes to the IV line in Robert’s left arm. “But I’m one of the good ones. I promise.”

“Does that mean you sparkle?”

“Like a diamond,” Tobin says from her spot in the doorway, where she’s leaning against it and watching Lindsey collect the blood with her signature Tobin grin. 

“Do you use a straw?”

“...what?” The other kid is talking now, and Lindsey glances up from what she’s doing, just for a second, and feels Robert tense before he utters a quiet “Ow.”

She steadies her hand, apologizes, and switches the vials out. “Do you use a straw,” the other twin says. “To drink the blood?”

“Uh, no, usually I just get it in a juice box,” she jokes. The boys look at her with wide eyes and one of them takes a half a step back and away from her. 

The pager permanently attached to Lindsey’s hip buzzes angrily and she gives Robert an apologetic look before ducking out of the room. It’s just a room number, but no message, and no 911. Lindsey replaces it at her hip and starts down the hallway to take her patient’s blood to the lab. Halfway down the corridor, her pager goes off again, and Lindsey glances down at it. It’s the same number, followed by a flashing _911_.

“Shit,” Lindsey mutters, pushing the button to silence the pager and breaking into a run. From the opposite end of the hallway, she can hear Tobin laughing. 

The lab is in the basement, because of course it is. Lindsey is out of breath by the time she hands the vials of blood and her patient’s information over to the tech behind the counter. He gives her a curious look, but she’s turning on her heels and jabbing the elevator button with her finger eight times, as if _that_ will make the elevator move any faster. 

She squeezes into the elevator and presses the corresponding button, hops out of it on her floor, and makes two wrong turns before finding the right room...and nearly turns right back around. Room 322 is the peds intern on-call room. Why can’t Emily just _text her_ like a normal person?

Instead of leaving, Lindsey reaches for the doorknob and yanks the door open to find Emily lounging on the bottom bunk, Switch in hand. She glances up at her, grins, and glances at her watch. “Ten minutes. Could be better.”

“You can’t _do_ that,” Lindsey hisses, stepping inside the room and pulling the door shut behind her. 

Emily blinks at her innocently. “Do what?”

“You can’t _page me_ and expect me to just show up at a moment’s notice!”

“...isn’t that what just happened? Am I having a stroke? Call a stroke alert, quick.” Lindsey glowers at her, but the little twitch of her lips gives her away, and Emily’s smile widens. “You didn’t answer my text.”

“Didn’t we already have this conversation?” Lindsey leans back against the door and Emily climbs to her feet. 

“I didn’t really like how that one ended,” she admits. They’re standing across from each other, Emily’s game forgotten on the TV, and, for some reason Lindsey doesn’t really understand, she can’t look away. Emily doesn’t back down, either. She just takes another step, crowds into Lindsey’s space a little bit, and it’s impossible to miss how Emily’s gaze drops to Lindsey’s mouth, if only for a second, before meeting her eyes again. 

“You can interview me,” Emily says, voice a little bit lower than it usually is. She clears her throat and tries again, and it’s back to normal. Lindsey tries not to think about that. “Like you’re going to screen all the other people who want to live with you. Ask me anything.”

Lindsey doesn’t _want_ to ask her anything. She doesn’t want to live with her friends or...whatever Emily is. She just wants to find some nurses or techs or random people who might work in the hospital that she doesn’t have to interact with every day so she can turn her brain off when she gets home, for one. Emily’s still talking, though, so Lindsey does the first thing she can think of to shut her up, which means she reaches for the front of Emily’s scrubs and tugs her forward and kisses her quiet.

It’s not _exactly_ quiet. Emily makes this little noise of surprise, which makes Lindsey laugh against her mouth, but then Emily _bites_ her, and it’s Lindsey’s turn to make a noise. Emily backs her into the door, pushes her weight against Lindsey and tilts her head to deepen it. Emily’s got a leg between Lindsey’s and a hand curled in the collar of her scrub top. Lindsey’s got her hands on Emily’s hips, so when Emily’s pager buzzes, she gives them a squeeze, as if she can force it to stop with enough pressure. 

Sighing, Emily breaks the kiss enough to reach for the pager. Lindsey redirects her mouth to Emily’s jaw and neck instead, considers leaving a mark but doesn’t get the chance because Emily’s leaning back and away from her. “Em,” she complains, trying to pull her back in. 

Emily’s shrugging back into her zip-up and throws her a smile. There’s a pretty blush dusting her cheeks that Lindsey hasn’t seen before, and it makes her worry her lower lip between her teeth. “I gotta go. I’m on admit service today.”

“Oh, so _your_ pages are _actual_ emergencies?”

“I guess I’m just more important than you,” Emily says, breezing by her and out of the on-call room. Once the door shuts again, Lindsey leans her head back against it and tries to steady her breathing. Her pager goes off, again, and she glances down at it.

_322\. ;)_

Lindsey groans. 

-

Tobin is first assist on the whipple, which means Lindsey’s a glorified medical student, manning the suction whenever there are small bleeders and retracting for her and the attending. Tobin keeps quizzing her on anatomy to keep her from falling asleep standing up, and she’s yet to get a question wrong.

“What about right-” Suddenly, everything goes to hell. There’s a bleeder Lindsey’s chasing, but even when Tobin clamps it, there’s too much blood in the field for anyone to see. Lindsey turns up the suction and Tobin throws in a stitch and things swim into focus, but it’s not what anyone expects.

There’s pus in the abdominal cavity, too, and they all know that with the surgery, there’s risk of that going to the blood. “Damn it,” Tobin says under her breath, finishing up her stitches. She glances at Dr. Ellis, who simply sighs. 

“Pack it in, folks, we can’t do this if there’s an active infection.”

“It’s already stage five-”

“And he knew we might not be able to do anything.” 

Basically, if the infection didn’t kill Robert, the cancer would. Dr. Ellis disrobes and leaves them to clean up the mess. Tobin closes in silence, doesn’t even ask for her usual playlist. Lindsey follows a step behind, keeps the surgical field clean, and Tobin lets her close the skin. 

Five minutes and a perfect mattress suture later, Lindsey’s standing in the scrub room beside Tobin, whose gripping the sink with white-knuckled hands and her head bowed. Lindsey pulls her scrub cap off and chucks it in the nearest bin, washes her hands just out of habit, and looks to her right. “It was inside the gallbladder, but the scans didn’t show anything. His immune system is compromised. We couldn’t have known going into it.”

“Are _you_ trying to make _me_ feel better?” Tobin laughs humorlessly, pushes off from the sink, and combs her fingers through her hair. “The labs were clean because he can’t mount an immune response, but that doesn’t mean I _like_ surgeries that don’t save people.”

“I’ll put in the orders. Just, um, don’t worry about it.”

“Easier said than done, Dr. Horan.” Tobin leaves the room and leaves Lindsey alone with her thoughts. 

She shouldn’t be thinking about Emily or kissing Emily or what might have happened if Emily’s pager hadn’t gone off. She should be thinking about her patient, and his family, and what antibiotics she’s going to try and use to prevent the infection from spreading. 

Only she isn’t. She’s tasting Emily’s chapstick and wondering, vaguely, if living together would be so bad.

-

Rose stares at Emily from across the table. “Is this going to be a regular thing? Don’t you have your own people to eat lunch with?”

“I mean,” Emily says, reaching for a potato chip off of Rose’s plate. “I do, but we have different lunch periods.” She’s using a serious voice, though the upturn of her mouth gives her away. “You guys seen Lindsey lately?”

“She had a surgery at ten,” Mal says helpfully, sitting down on Emily’s other side. She’s sitting the same way as before, the seat backwards, chin propped on her crossed arms as she looks between the pair. 

“Should’ve been done by now. Twenty says Tobin had to save her.”

“Did you learn nothing from the first bet?” Emily bites out, not bothering to look up where Russell’s hovering nearby. “She’s good. If something went wrong, it wasn’t Horan’s doing.”

“We all make mistakes,” Russell says, sitting down across from her and spreading a truly alarming amount of butter onto his mashed potatoes. Emily kind of hopes he throws himself into diabetes. “Even the Great Horan isn’t immune.” He takes a bite, then points his fork in Emily’s direction. “...what do you care anyway?”

Emily takes a sip of water at that exact moment, ignores the way Mal and Rose share a look over Russell’s head. “We’re friends. Kind of.” 

“Didn’t know peds and surg fraternized,” Russell replies with an eyeroll.

Mal clears her throat. “We’re all doctors. It doesn’t really matter what specialty. Plus, she brought cookies.”

Russell reaches for the last one, and Rose beats him to it. Smirking, she takes a bite of it before holding the rest out to him. He shakes his head.

Emily gets up. She doesn’t dislike the other surgery interns, she likes Rose and Mal, actually, but if she talks to Russell for too long, she feels like she’s getting dumber.

And, since she’s got lives in her hands, she kind of figures she should try and get smarter instead of dumber.

-

Robert’s grandkids are in the room when Lindsey goes to check on him later, which makes her pause in the doorway. She braces herself, squares her shoulders, and walks inside. The twins climb off of the bed when she enters and she flashes them a toothy grin, just for the hell of it. The older of the two boys ducks behind his brother and Robert, who’s just gotten back from surgery, is still coming out of the anesthesia. The kids are bouncing around the room trying to talk at once, and Robert’s wife and daughter are tucked away in the corner. 

Lindsey watches one of the boys drape a paper chain across the hospital bed while his brother tries to explain a video game to his drowsy grandfather. She kind of wants to turn around and let them have this moment as a family before she delivers the news, but she also knows that it’s going to be harder to do that the longer she waits. 

She takes a deep breath, tries to rearrange her face into something less worried, and gestures at Robert’s wife and daughter. “Maybe you’d like to talk out here?” His daughter, Molly, looks a little bit cautiously towards the twins. “Or have them come out here…” She knows she’s not doing a good job at being reassuring, but she wants the boys’ parents to decide if -and when- to tell them what’s going on with their grandpa. That part wasn’t in her job description.

“My husband isn’t here,” Molly says, brushing back the hair out of one of the boy’s eyes. “There’s no one to…”

“Hey!” Lindsey startles at the familiar voice so close and takes a step to the left while Emily appears in her peripheral vision. “What’s up, Dr. Horan? Oh, cool, who are these guys?” She sounds a little bit out of breath, like she’s just run a few flights of steps. 

“Uh-”

“I’m Jake, this is Adam, we’re four!” 

Emily’s eyes get big. “Whoa. Hey, you guys wanna come get a snack with me?” The kids both look towards their mom, but Lindsey’s only looking at Emily, giving her a grateful look. Their mom nods and Emily leads the boys towards the vending machine while Adam tells her about how Lindsey’s a vampire, actually, and not a doctor.

“What’s going on?” Molly demands as soon as they’re alone. Robert’s wife is quiet, standing beside his bed, holding his hand tightly. 

“The surgery went fine, but we were unable to complete it like we wanted to,” Lindsey begins, clasping her hands in front of her and trying to figure out the best way to break the news. “When we started cutting, there was pus in the gallbladder. It ended up in Robert’s abdominal cavity, and it means there’s some kind of infection brewing. We had to back off because proceeding with the surgery could cause the infection to spread-”

“Why didn’t we know about this infection before? You took about ten vials of blood.”

Lindsey winces. “Yeah, we did. With the cancer, Robert’s immune system isn’t as strong as yours or mine. We couldn’t have known until-”

“And now you’ve cut him open and it might have spread? Now what do we do?”

“I...we...he’s on antibiotics now.” Lindsey gestures to the IV bag. “And now we just have to hope-”

“Hope? Oh, that’s rich. We’re just going to have to /hope/ this hasn’t screwed everything up and he’s not going to die faster now. I knew we shouldn’t have gone through with this surgery, and especially not with inexperienced doctors. We should have gone back to Stanford. We should have-”

“Molly…”

“Is there a problem here?”

Tobin. Lindsey’s been backed into a corner, almost literally, without noticing it. she’s got her arms crossed tightly over her chest and her shoulders hunched, like she’s trying to make herself as small as possible -difficult, given her 5’9” height. 

“Yeah, there’s a problem! You cut my father open and told us this might help him get a few more months, and now you’re saying you cut him open and maybe made things worse. How do you explain that…” Robert’s daughter pauses, glances down at the nametag on Tobin’s jacket. “Dr. Heath?” The way she says _doctor_ makes it sound like she doesn’t believe Tobin has graduated high school.

Tobin’s not smiling for the first time Lindsey can remember, but her voice stays calm. “Unfortunately, even imaging studies that we perform can’t show us everything. We wouldn’t have known at all if the infection hadn’t progressed as far as it has. It’s not necessarily a bad thing- just a set back. If we’d completed the surgery without knowing about the infection, it could have gotten this bloodstream and we might have missed it entirely. It might be a-”

“-if you’re going to say a ‘blessing in disguise’, save it for someone who believes in God.” 

There’s a little flicker in Tobin’s eyes, but she doesn’t flinch otherwise. “Well,” she says, tipping her chin towards the IV. “We’re treating the infection now, but I wouldn’t recommend any surgery until that’s cleared up.” Her gaze flicks to Robert and his wife instead, and her eyes soften. “I’m really sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Hodges. We’ll do everything we can and if you need anything at all, Dr. Horan is only a page away.”

Lindsey finds herself nodding and trails Tobin out of the room. “You okay?” Tobin asks, quirking a brow at her.

“I...yeah, she was just so _mad_.”

Tobin shrugs. “Yeah. People blame doctors when stuff goes wrong. Welcome to surgery.” She pats Lindsey’s shoulder as she heads down the hallway. “Let me know if you need anything, but mostly if anyone’s, like, _actually_ dying, okay?”

“Sure.”

“Lindsey! Lindsey!” The twins are bowling down the hall with Emily hot on their heels, and they’ve both got what look like Doritos wedges between their gums and lips where their canines should be. “Look, we’re vampires, too!”

She can’t help but laugh. “Did Dr. Sonnett get you guys some of my special juice boxes, too?” The boys show off their juice with winks and then disappear back into their granddad’s room. Lindsey’s just glad she doesn’t have to go back in there right now.

“You good?” Emily asks, scratching the back of her neck as they stand across from each other in the corridor. 

“I will be,” she replies as a nurse with a patient strapped to a gurney passes by, asking her for orders. Lindsey gives Emily a mock salute and trails after them and Emily goes the opposite direction.

-

Peds isn’t Lindsey’s thing. It wasn’t in medical school, when she made kids cry on a regular basis, and it’s not now, when she sometimes cuts them open to take out stuff that’s not working right. Still, whenever things go to shit, she often finds herself standing outside of the nursery window, looking at babies she doesn’t have to take care of, who are all wrapped up and wearing pink or blue knit caps. There’s just _something_ about babies that makes her feel better. Maybe it’s because they’re innocent. 

Or maybe it’s because they won’t _yell_ at her like patients’ families will. 

She’s standing in front of the window to the nursery, smiling at the newborns and laughing a little bit at some of the names. Who names their kid /Riot/? There are twelve babies in the nursery right now, and Lindsey’s been looking at each one for two minutes before moving on. She’s just reached baby number eight, whom she /thinks/ might be named after a band, when the easy smile she’s been wearing since she got up here falters.

The little girl is crying her eyes out, but that’s not what strikes Lindsey. It’s the fact that the infant is turning blue right before her eyes. Without really thinking about it, Lindsey uses her badge to swipe into the nursery. Surgeons don’t usually hang out here, except for when there are babies who need emergency surgery, but she’s not /that/ far out of medical school, and even if she /wasn’t/, she knows that babies _aren’t supposed to turn blue_. 

She’s got her stethoscope out and the baby unwrapped, earpieces in, when someone breezes into the nursery. “What are you doing here?” The brunette demands, narrowing her eyes. Lindsey looks up and takes one earpiece out. 

“She has a pretty prominent murmur,” Lindsey says carefully, tucking the stethoscope back into her coat pocket. “I didn’t see anything in her chart.”

“This isn’t even your service,” the woman, whom Lindsey notes is wearing pink scrubs, hisses, picking up the baby’s chart and flipping through it. “And it’s a simple systolic ejection murmur. She’ll grow out of it.” 

“She...she turned blue.” Lindsey blinks at the woman and glances back at the baby who, of course, is now perfectly pink and snoozing. It seemed like she’d calmed down as soon as Lindsey had given her a finger to squeeze. “Aren’t you at least going to get an echo? Or maybe have cards see her? It could be-”

“Look, just because you’ve read a book or fifty doesn’t mean you know what you’re talking about, here. I could call your supervisor -or mine- and we’ll see what _they_ think about this. Is that what you want, Dr. Horan? Is that-”

“What’s going on, Hayley?” Emily glances between the two, Lindsey, standing with her hand clamped on the baby’s bassinet, knuckles white, and Hayley, hair spilling out of its usual bow and eyes narrowed. 

“She thinks she saw something and now she’s telling me how to do my job, which is hilarious, because I’m sure the last time she even _touched_ a kid was-”

“Last week,” Emily supplies with a shrug. “She did my appy. Anyway, if Dr. Horan thinks she saw something, maybe you should, I don’t know, consider that maybe you missed something? We’re all tired. It’s possible.”

“Are you kidding me, Emily? You’re going to take her word over mine?”

“That’s not- look, I just think it’s better safe than sorry, alright?” 

“Whatever. Sure. You order the tests, then.” The other intern, Hayley, is gone before Lindsey can even open her mouth. 

Emily gives her a look. “I hope you’re right, because I don’t _really_ want to deal with this later.”

-

“Hey,” Mal says when Lindsey shows up in their basement hideout later that afternoon. “What’s up? You look…”

“Wrecked,” Rose supplies from another gurney, laughing and chucking a package of cookies in Lindsey’s direction. Lindsey catches them and flops heavily onto Mal’s stretcher and eating two before bothering to answer.

“My cancer guy’s dying-”

“Are you surprised?”

“-and I pissed off one of the peds interns because I saw a baby turn blue and wanted to do something about it.”

“You what?” Mal’s head snaps up from the book she’s reading and her eyebrows arc back towards her hairline. Rose just laughs, hopping to her feet and calling over her shoulder as she leaves.

“Don’t you know?” Rose’s voice carries as she makes a left turn. “You’re not supposed to butt in on other services’ cases!”

Lindsey flops onto the bed on her back and stares at the ceiling, munching angrily on a cookie. “What happened with the baby?” Mal asks, sounding genuinely curious, and Lindsey gives her a sideways glance.

“She turned blue and she’s got a murmur. Nobody was _doing_ anything about it. I just...we took an oath, you know?”

“I think you did the right thing, Linds.” Mal squeezes Lindsey’s knee and steals a cookie. “...what were you doing up there anyway?”

Lindsey’s cheeks turn a little pink. “I dunno. I guess I just...the babies make me feel better when stuff gets crazy out here.” Mal nods. It makes sense to her. “How’s the call? Are you gonna be moving into my spare room? Please tell me Russ didn’t find something cool.”

“I think he’s in surgery now,” Mal says apologetically. “I have no idea what he’s doing, but _I_ did another lap chole today.” They both dissolve into laughter that’s probably fueled partially by exhaustion and partially by how stupid the bet was to begin with. 

“Did you eat? I can go grab you dinner if-” As if on cue, Mal’s pager goes off. Then Lindsey’s does. Lindsey lets her head hit the mattress for a second before hauling herself to her feet. 

“See ya tomorrow?”

“Maybe.”

-

When she reaches Robert’s room, it’s chaos. 

His monitor is blaring a single, monotone noise and there are already four people around the bed. The kids are crying, Molly’s yelling, and Robert’s wife looks like she might pass out. Lindsey grabs Robert’s nurse and she manages to wrangle the family to the waiting room. 

“What’s the call, doc?” One of the nurses asks. Lindsey eyes the heart monitor and feels her own sink. There’s no rhythm there, and before Lindsey even reaches out to try and find his radial pulse, she knows there’s nothing. “Start CPR. I need two large bore IVs and can we get one of epi ready? Bag mask for now, I’m going to intubate…”

Following the ACLS algorithm is easy. It’s methodical, like the things she studied in books, and even with her patient crashing in front of her, Lindsey is able to follow the steps easily. She puts on a pair of gloves and has nurse Terry lower the bed and easily places the endotracheal tube, like she’s done dozens of times on dummies, and uses her stethoscope to check for placement. By this time, it’s been two minutes, and the person recording tells her as much.

“Push the epi. Draw up another, and we’ll keep going. Josh, do you need to switch out?” They go on like that for twenty minutes, never getting a pulse back. Lindsey even ends up taking over on compressions towards the end, when the nurses tire out and everyone else seems ready to give up. Lindsey pushes hard and fast, the tune of _Staying Alive_ in her head, and she watches the monitor instead of looking at Robert, because she knows he’s already turning gray and that, if they haven’t gotten him back yet, they probably won’t at all. 

“Dr. Horan.” It’s Tobin, again. She’s right at Lindsey’s side while she keeps doing compressions. She’s been at this nearly five minutes on her own, now, and her arms feel like Jell-o, and she can feel pressure behind her eyes but she /refuses/ to cry here, over this, when it was a long shot to begin with. But then she thinks about Adam and Jake and Molly, thinks about Robert’s wife of thirty years, and she presses so hard she can feel ribs cracking under her hands. 

Tobin grips her shoulder, tightly, and almost gently pulls her back. “It’s time. You have to let him go.” So she does. Lindsey stops CPR and takes a step back, flings a plastic syringe in the direction of the trash, and finds the clock mounted on the wall.

“Time of death: 16:04.” 

They’d been working for almost half an hour. Lindsey feels exhausted to the bone, and not /just/ because she’d been the only one doing compressions for the last five minutes. It’s the kind of deep exhaustion that only hours spent in the hospital without seeing anything good can bring, and her shift’s not even over yet. 

“The first one’s always the worst,” Tobin’s saying, but her voice sounds muffled, like it’s coming from very far away. “-can tell them if you want.”

Lindsey shakes her head and shuffles out into the hallway. She _really_ hopes someone’s taken the twins outside or something. She walks directly to Robert’s wife and she and her daughter both stand up. His wife looks like she already knows; his daughter just looks like she’s going to start crying at any second. Tobin hovers back near the nurses’ station while Lindsey approaches them.

“Robert’s heart stopped, and while we did everything we could to try and bring him back, we were unable to. I’m really sorry.” She’s a little proud of herself because her voice doesn’t shake. The rest of the conversation goes by like a blur, and she’s not even really sure _what_ she says, but Tobin gives her a thumbs up while she walks down the hallway, so she figures it must have been okay.

She ends up on the third floor. Again.

In Emily’s on-call room. Again.

There’s no one in here, which is actually kind of nice. Lindsey shuts off the lights, crawls into the lower bunk, and closes her eyes. 

-

“Hey. Lindsey. Hey.”

“Five more minutes.”

“Linds, you’re in my bed.” 

“You said you take the top.” Emily sighs and climbs into bed, too, though she wedges herself into the space between Lindsey and the wall. It takes a little maneuvering, but she manages, chin propped upon Lindsey’s shoulder and one arm crammed between Lindsey’s back and her own chest, the other loose around her waist. Lindsey’s breathing is soft and even, and it’s lulling Emily to sleep when she remembers that she was looking for Lindsey for a reason.

“Hey!” She says, lifting her head and kicking the back of Lindsey’s calf with a socked foot. “Hey, I wanted to tell you, you were right about Tesla.”

“I drive a BMW. I’m not _that_ much of a tool.”

“...Tesla’s the baby.”

Lindsey sits up so fast she hits her head off of the top of the bottom bunk. She swears and swings her legs over the side of the bed. Emily whines at her and rolls onto her back. “What?”

“Kid’s got tetralogy. One of the cardio guys is gonna do a repair.”

“What? _When_?”

Emily throws her hands up and presses her face into the pillow. “Now, I guess? I don’t know.” Lindsey’s already forcing her feet into her sneakers and flinging on her coat. She has the door half open before she remembers to thank Emily.

“Bye, thanks!”

“Yeah, nice seeing you, too.” 

-

Lindsey doesn’t really _know_ Dr. Parsons, but she ducks her head into his OR anyway, explains that she was the intern who first noticed the baby’s tet spell, and asks, politely, if she might be able to watch. 

To her surprise, he tells her to scrub in and she’s standing at his left while he repairs a tiny hole in the tiniest heart she’s ever seen. Lindsey holds the retractor for him instead of his PA, and she even gets to place the staples at the end. 

They’re standing in the scrub room, after, and Lindsey feels that spike of adrenaline she does after a surgery. It takes hours for her to come down from it, and it’s better than any drug. “Thank you,” she tells the cardiothoracic surgeon who’d just let her close up a baby’s chest.

“No, _thank you_,” he tells her with a shake of his head. “You caught what someone else didn’t. Your attention to detail’s going to serve you well.” 

“Thank...thank you, sir.” 

And then he’s gone.

-

They all meet up in the locker room, after. They’re all free, except for Mal, who’s stuck until morning with the pager. Lindsey’s back in her street clothes, one shoe on, when Russell comes sauntering in. He leans against the row of lockers in front of her and smirks. 

“So,” he says, to the rest of the room. “What did you guys get in to today?”

“Cholecystectomy and a skin graft,” Mal says with a shrug. Routine surgeries, but they’d gone well, so she can’t _really_ complain...except she really needs to get out of her parents’ house. 

“Lucky. All I did was an exploratory laparotomy.” Rose tosses her scrubs into the laundry and pulls her hoodie over her head. 

“My whipple turned into that, too, and then the patient died.” 

Russell, being Russell, laughs. “We had a trauma roll into the ER,” he explains, straddling the bench and sitting too close to Lindsey, who scoots away a foot or so. “He works at a factory or something, I dunno, but he ended up having his arm cut clean off. We had to reattach it. It. Was. Awesome.”

“God, Linds, I’m _so_ sorry,” Rose says, wincing. Lindsey just chuckles. 

“Come on, Horan, you’re not going to refuse to woman up, right?” Russell wonders, tone teasing. “We _said_ whoever got the most interesting surgery gets to choose who lives with you. So, which one of you guys wants the smaller bedroom? I’m open to bribes.”

Lindsey laughs again and shrugs into her jacket. “I mean, I did the shitty whipple, but I _also_ got to close the chest on an open-heart surgery on a one-day-old because I found a murmur on exam.” Russell curses. Mal’s eyes nearly roll out of her head. Rose says _Holy shit, Lindsey!_

“So, you two need a place to stay?” Lindsey asks as she shoulders her bag. 

Mal beams at her. Rose just shakes her head. “I don’t know why you guys thought I didn’t have my own place. I only gave the whipple to you because you looked depressed this morning and I didn’t wanna deal with it all day.”

“Does that mean I get the second bedroom?” Russell asks hopefully.

Lindsey has other ideas.

-

This time, when the elevator dings open and Emily steps inside, Lindsey follows her. Emily grins at her and takes a step to her right so that their shoulders touch. Lindsey feels like she’s on fire even though she can feel goosebumps prickling on her skin even beneath her jacket and t-shirt. They move two floors without saying anything at all and Emily moves her hand from her backpack strap to her side. When she does it, their hands brush, but Emily doesn’t reach for her hand and neither does Lindsey. Their pinkies just barely touch, just for a second, and then it’s gone.

“So,” Lindsey says, finally, still looking straight ahead. “Do you wanna move in or what?”

“This is moving really fast, Linds. We’re not even exclusive.” 

That makes Lindsey look at her. She almost wants to rescind the offer, but that might mean having _Russell_ in her second bedroom, and she’s not sure she can deal with that. 

She’s not really sure she can deal with _Emily_ there, either, but it seems like a better option, right now. Emily holds up her hands. “I’m kidding. Jeez. Your face really _might_ stick like that, you know.” The elevator dings as the doors open to the lobby, and Emily steps out. She’s walking backwards when she says, “I’d love to move in with you, though. Thanks!”

“Hey, Sonny?” Lindsey’s still inside the elevator. Emily stops walking. “How come you believed me, back there? In the nursery?”

Emily’s smile softens and her eyes wrinkle a little bit. “Because,” she says. The elevator starts to close and Emily takes a few quick steps, sticks her foot in between the closing doors so that they spring open again. “You’re a great doctor, but you’re a good _person_. Even if you were wrong, I know you were only doing it because you thought you were helping the baby, not to get one up on Raso. You put patients first. It’s cool, especially for a surgeon.” She winks and takes her foot back. The elevator closes, and Lindsey’s left inside of it, taking another trip upstairs even though she’s off the clock.

Her heart flutters a little bit in her chest.

-

As she’s walking out of the hospital five minutes later, her phone vibrates. 

It’s Emily.

_u owe me coffee x2 btw  
also, can i borrow ur netflix pw?___


	3. put me in, coach

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, guys! Sorry for the gap between last chapter and this one. Had a busy couple of weeks, but we're back, baby, and you get some Emily POV for your patience.
> 
> Fun fact that I wrote the entire first scene and the entire last scene like 2 weeks ago with minor tweaks and then just filled in the rest. Trust the process I guess?
> 
> Unbeta'd, all mistakes are mine, apologies in advance.

Living with surgeons is...weird.

They wake up before dawn and, sometimes, fall asleep before the sun sets (if they make it home before then, anyway). They leave their dirty laundry all over the place and never cook at home, but there’s almost always leftover takeout and they all make _ really good _coffee. 

Emily just sort of wishes she could enjoy it after 4 a.m. She’s not a light sleeper, really, but she _ does _ always notice when Lindsey gets out of bed. And, if they’re being honest, Emily hasn’t slept in her own bed down the hall since that first night. They could really have a fourth roommate, but no one wants to tip the balance, and, besides, it’s nice to have a place to retreat to when she _ actually _ wants to sleep past four. 

“C’mon, no,” Emily murmurs, voice thick with sleep as she tightens her arm around Lindsey’s waist and presses her nose into the spot between Lindsey’s shoulder blades. “I know for a _ fact _ Tobin won’t be in until 5:30, so that means you can get in at five and be fine.” 

“Fine doesn’t cut it, babe,” Lindsey replies, and Emily fucking _ loves _ how raspy her voice is in the morning. She wishes, not for the first time, that they weren’t both doctors because the idea of wasting an entire day in bed sounds perfect right now, especially with the rain pelting the roof. “I want to be the best and that means early mornings. You knew what you were signing up for.”

“Yeah,” Emily answers, chasing a splash of freckles on Lindsey’s shoulders with her lips. “But when we slept together the first time I didn’t know I was gonna _ like you _.” Or that they were going to see each other ever again. Emily’s kind of glad that things worked out the way they did, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t immediately miss Lindsey’s warmth when she rolls out of bed. Emily rolls onto Lindsey’s side of the bed and spoons her pillow instead, smiling faintly when Lindsey leans down to steal a kiss before disappearing to follow the scent of fresh-brewed coffee. 

“I’ll see you later?”

“Much later. I’m not due in until six.”

“Don’t rub it in.”

Emily gets about fifteen more minutes of light sleep before getting out of bed herself, shuffling into the kitchen wearing a too-big Yale sweatshirt and giving Mal a wave with a sleeve-covered hand. She pours herself a cup of coffee and pulls herself up onto the counter, takes a large sip and hums.

“Okay. Hi. I’m alive again.” 

“Hey. Nice sweatshirt.” Emily burrows further into it and smiles into her mug. She’s _ happy _ . Tired and overworked, but she likes her job, she likes her _ friends _ , and she _ really _ likes Lindsey. For the first time since she moved cross-country for residency, she feels like she’s found her footing, and it’s really, really nice. She doesn’t even mind the light ribbing. 

“Thanks, it looks better on me. What’s up?”

Mal’s mid-bite when Emily asks the question, so she chews thoughtfully and then says, “I’m doing ER consults today, so hopefully some kind of...minor accident so we can save people, but also cut them open happens.”

Emily grins and lifts her mug in a mock toast. “I’ll drink to that.” She hears the shower turn off, so she climbs off of the counter to dig for Lindsey’s travel mug, fills it, leaving a bit of room for creamer and pours a good amount of vanilla into it. When Lindsey rounds the corner, she hands the cup off and Lindsey gives her a kiss.

“I love….” Her eyes widen almost comically and Emily quirks a brow at her. “...coffee. Thanks.” 

“Don’t mention it, gorgeous,” Emily replies with a chuckle. 

“Mal, you ready?”

“As I’ll ever be. Let’s go.”

“Bye, guys. Save some lives and stuff!”

“You, too!”

-

Hayley gives her a hug as soon as she steps onto the Peds floor. It’s a little bit weird, only because of what happened between her and Lindsey last month, but Emily returns it anyway, lets Hayley lean her weight into her for a few seconds before taking a step back, though she keeps her hands on Hayley’s upper arms and raises her eyebrows. “Long night?”

“Four new babies, one that had to be life flighted to Children’s, one that I had to code at 3 am, and the kid in 307 wouldn’t stop seizing.”

“No one died, though, right?” Emily knows because she checked the board before leaving the house, like she always does. Hayley’s lips twitch. “See. You might not know what you’re doing, but you’re doing a good job anyway. What do I need to know?”

-

Reagan is sixteen. She was one of Emily’s very first patients, which is why she offers her a fist bump and a chocolate bar as soon as she enters the room. 

She’s also got cancer.

Specifically, Reagan has osteosarcoma, which is being treated with chemotherapy, and that’s why she’s at Providence Hospital in the first place. 

“Morning, Reagan. Mrs. Sullivan.” The girl’s mother looks up from the hat she’s knitting and offers a tired wave. Her daughter’s already wearing a homemade knit cap and there are several of them, all different colors, on the bedside table. Reagan’s got her Switch in hand and maneuvers around Emily while she does her exam, tongue poking out while she focuses. 

“Are you gonna play me today or what?” Reagan asks between exhales, jerking her arms a bit as she scores a goal in FIFA. “Or are you scared you’re gonna lose again?”

“Some of us have to work,” Emily replies with a shrug, leaning over to see the score on the game and scoffing. “Besides, I’d kick your...butt.” She clears her throat, glances at Reagan’s mom, and drops her voice slightly. “After lunch, okay?” 

“_After _ chemo? That’s cheating.”

“Does chemo affect your thumbs?”

“Maybe.”

“Take it or leave it. I got other kids to see.”

“And I thought I was your favorite.” Reagan sighs dramatically and flops back against her pillows while Emily laughs her way out of the room.

Slowly, the rest of the team is rolling in. Ellie is a third-year medical student who shows up early and, without fail, brings Emily a coffee every morning. She meets Emily halfway down the hall, smiles too brightly for this time of morning, and hands over the second coffee. “Hey, Dr. Sonnett! If there’s anything interesting today or anything I can do to help-” 

Emily holds up a hand palm up, takes a long sip of her coffee. She’s really going to miss Ellie when she moves on to her next rotation, because it means she’ll have to get her second cup of coffee for herself again. “Kid in 302 is interesting. And you’re not unpaid labor, El.”

“I mean,” Ellie says, heading down the corridor with a spring in her step that Emily wonders if she ever had. “I kind of am, but thanks! Text me if something cool comes up?”

-

The babies are Emily’s favorite part, she thinks. They’re cute and easy and don’t talk back. Emily spends a lot of her free time in the nursery, because it’s quiet, and no one bothers her here. She’s making her way down the line of bassinets, checking out each infant and then swaddling them back up. There’s a premature baby, though, one of the kids Hayley had helped deliver last night, whose mom was sick and intubated in the ICU, who Emily spends a little bit of extra time with. 

She picks him up and rocks him, talks to him about her day and about how she’s going to kick Reagan’s butt in FIFA, and she’s halfway through telling the baby, who doesn’t _ actually _ have a name about Lindsey when Lindsey pops up in front of the window to the nursery. 

Emily’s got the tiny baby, who weighs just under three pounds, cradled in her arms and against one shoulder when she turns around, and Lindsey’s wearing the smile that Emily’s really only seen her give to her, soft and genuine and like she can’t really believe it. Emily shifts the baby, whom she’s decided to call Terry until proven otherwise, to the other arm and gestures with her chin for Lindsey to come inside.

She does, though she just sinks heavily into the rocking chair nestled in one corner while Emily keeps talking to Terry. “Okay, Big T, this is your moment. This is her. You know, the one I was talking to you about.” 

Lindsey’s smile is still there, though she’s trying very hard to hide it. Emily keeps talking. “She’s my girlfriend and she’s a _ surgeon _, which means she’s kind of a genius. Also she has great hands, which is really good for me.”

“Should you really be telling him all that?”

“What?” Emily blinks, resting her chin on top of Terry’s head. “It’s important for us all to be open. Besides, he doesn’t know what I’m saying yet. Didn’t you have to take childhood development? I’m just soothing him with vibrations.”

“You look good with them.”

“You’re into the mommy thing, huh?”

“Would you shut up?”

“Make me.” Lindsey looks, for a moment, like she’s considering it, but her gaze flicks to the large window in front of the nursery, where a couple of parents have wandered over. There’s little blush creeping along Lindsey’s neck when she shakes her head. “That’s what I thought.”

Lindsey looks exhausted. There are dark circles under her eyes and she’s a little bit pale, lips chapped in a way that makes Emily want to kiss her. She flops heavily into the rocking chair tucked away in the corner of the nursery, arms crossed across her chest almost defensively, and sinks down into it. Her eyes flutter closed and Emily maneuvers around the infant she’s still holding to pull the blanket draped over the back of the chair over Lindsey instead, presses a feather-light kiss to her cheek before straightening up again when her pager goes off. Sighing, she silences it and puts Terry back in his bassinet. 

“Bye, baby.” It’s unclear whether she’s talking to her patient or her girlfriend.

-

Christen is holding a baby when Emily shows up for rounds, and no one seems phased by this. Not Ellie, who hands her a cup of coffee. Not Caitlin, who is fighting with her still-ringing pager. And _ definitely _ not Tobin Heath, who is leaning over Christen’s shoulder to squint at something on the computer screen while Christen points at it. 

“So you’ve done this before?” Ellie asks innocently. Tobin and Christen share a knowing look and Tobin hides a smile behind her own cup of coffee.

“Well,” she says, leaning back in her chair and lifting her shoulder in a shrug. “I’ve _ seen _ one, which means next I have to do one, and then I have to teach someone else how to do one. So I’m halfway there.” 

“And you’ll just go in there and open things up or…?”

Tobin points at the spot in the image where the baby’s esophagus ends in a blind pouch. “I’m going to have to connect this to the stomach and hope that she’s able to eat normally after that. The trick is, sometimes it’s not as simple as we see on these films. What if the trachea is connected, too? Then she’d get food in her lungs, and that’s-”

“Bad,” Ellie says helpfully, reaching down to brush her fingers over the baby’s curls. Christen sighs heavily and gives Tobin a raised brow.

“So, you’ll take her in today?”

“Yeah, just have to double-check the board, but I think we can squeeze her in for you, Dr. Press.” 

With a fond smile, Tobin gets to her feet and turns to go, throwing a look over her shoulder. “If you want, Ellie, you can probably scrub in.”

“Really?” She squeals, trotting off after Tobin like a baby duckling. 

“If you’re into holding retractors,” Emily says with an eyeroll. “A surgery internship’s just for you.”

“Aren’t you dating a surgery intern?” Caitlin stage-whispers badly. Ellie’s eyebrows shoot back towards her hairline. 

“We’re talking about that. Later. After I save a life!”

“We’ll see you in six hours.” Emily privately hopes Ellie doesn’t fall in love with the OR; she’s too happy for those long hours. 

“Okay, everyone, what do we got?” Christen starts walking down the hall towards baby Johnson’s room, still cradling her as they walk. 

“Robbie is still seizing, so neuro’s got him on long-term EEG monitoring and they’ve added a second anti-epileptic,” Caitlin says falling into step with their senior resident and gesturing to the room. “He’s playing video games to try and trigger one now, so hopefully, we’ll see something soon if it’s going to happen.”

“And Sullivan?”

“Chemo today,” Emily replies, thumbing in Reagan’s direction. “And that’ll finish up the cycle, so PET scan in six weeks, and go from there.”

“Good. Dr. Foord, you’ll keep an eye on this little one after her surgery?”

“Of course.”

“And Dr. Sonnett, you’ve got the rest of the nursery under control?”

“No babies have escaped yet, so yeah.”

Christen chuckles softly and hands the baby off to Caitlin before retreating towards the on-call rooms. She’s hour twenty-eight into a thirty-six hour shift, leaving the two of them to handle the floor unless something big happens. Christen’s always been available to them, to the point where Emily once had to tuck her into bed herself to make sure she didn’t pass out in the middle of an admission. “Call me if you need anything, okay? I’m right down the hall.”

“We won’t, but thanks for the offer!”

Emily takes this opportunity to retreat to a quiet place to do her charts. It’s the most boring part of her job, but it’s necessary, and armed with her laptop and a truly alarming amount of snacks, she sneaks away from Caitlin and the peds floor to the mostly abandoned corridor in the basement of the hospital where her surgeons hang out.

Only, Lindsey is in surgery and Russell is...somewhere, Emily doesn’t really care, so she wedges herself in between Mal and Rose on one of the gurneys even though there are about six other ones along the wall, kicks off her sneakers, and opens up her laptop to get to work. 

“Hey,” Rose grumbles, shoving at her shoulder a little bit. “Surgeons only.”

“That’s discriminatory,” Emily says, munching on a Poptart. “It’s a free country.”

Mal reaches around her for a handful of chips and goes back to her cardiology textbook. “She’s almost an honorary surgeon.”

“Dating one of us doesn’t make you a surgeon,” Rose argues, though Emily’s not even the one arguing. She’s busy frowning at a CAT scan on her screen. 

“No, but she lives with Lindsey and me, so she’s on our schedule.”

“But she gets to come in late and leave earlier!”

“But we chose this path, and it’s gonna be worth it in…” Mal groans, looking at the countdown clock on her phone. “Four years and eleven months.”

“And how many hours?”

“Fourteen,” Mal says quietly, throwing a chip in Rose’s direction. She just cackles and pops it into her mouth, nudging Emily’s leg and glancing away from her own charts to narrow her eyes at Emily’s. “Wait, you guys have an osteo? Who’s cutting into it?”

“No one. She’s chemo and radiation only.”

“For now,” Rose says ominously, pointing at the cluster of abnormal cells as it spreads from Reagan’s tibia and up into her femur. “You know that 85% of these kids have to have surgery. You went to med school, I assume, or you wouldn’t be here.”

“She wants to try and keep the leg. She plays soccer. Was being scouted D1 before all of this. ” Mal hums sympathetically and Rose simply shrugs.

“They make good prosthetics, now. If you need someone to cut…”

Emily rushes to her feet so quickly that she scatters the papers spread across the stretcher to the floor. “Dude,” Rose complains while Emily takes her hair out of its bun and redoes it, her hands shaking a little bit as she does it, jaw clenched and eyes narrowed. “I’m just saying.”

“And _ I’m _ just saying, stay the hell out of cases you’re not involved in. Just because it _ could _ be surgical doesn’t mean it’s _ going _ to be.” She pauses, slams her laptop shut, and starts packing all of her stuff into her bag. “And, besides, even if it was, I wouldn’t be consulting _ you _ of all of the residents here.”

“Yeah, yeah. We all know you and Press only consult your girlfriends. Which is, like, an inherent bias, by the way.” Emily’s ears are burning as she shoves her things into her backpack. She doesn’t trust herself to say anything she won’t regret just now, especially because these are Lindsey’s _ friends. _

Mal clears her throat, speaks softly. “You know that’s not true. Tobin’s probably going to be chief next year and Lindsey’s-”

“A prodigy. We know.”

“She’s good at her job, Rose. That’s not a _ bad _ thing.” 

“It is when she’s getting surgeries and I’m not. I wanted that chole.” 

Before Emily has the chance to say something now that she’s calmed down -a tiny bit- her pager buzzes, saving her and the others from her angry words. 

“See you guys,” she says, clipped, and frowns at the number flashing on the screen. 

It’s Reagan. 

-

When Emily makes it to her room, Russell is already there, standing on one side of Reagan’s bed, hands on the railing. Christen is standing on the opposite side, her knuckles white with how tightly she’s holding on. Reagan looks impossibly small in bed just now, and relief washes over her face when she spots Emily in the doorway.

“Sonny,” she says, and Christen gives her a look when the patient uses the nickname with her. Emily just shrugs it off. “He says if I get the surgery now, I might be able to play again before the end of my senior year.” The hope in the girl’s voice _ kills _ Emily. She knows that that’s certainly possible, but she _ also _ knows that they should give the medicine time to work, because once you chop someone’s leg off, it’s not like you can go back to where they were before. 

Emily slides in next to Christen, her pinky just barely touching her senior’s, and nods. “Possible, but it won’t be the same as you do now. It’d be with a prosthetic, so there’s not real telling how you’d play. Plus, we talked about this. What happened to trying chemotherapy and radiation first?” This is directed more towards Reagan’s mother than Reagan herself, though Emily’s gaze never leaves her patient’s. 

“We’re just trying to think about the future,” Mrs. Sullivan says from her chair, and Emily feels Christen sigh beside her. 

Russell is the one who speaks. “And cutting it out is the only way to be _ sure _ it won’t spread.”

“It hasn’t spread past the leg,” Emily says bluntly. 

“But it _ has _ spread from the tibia to the femur. We saw the same films.”

“Okay, so? Have you played college soccer? Do you know what it’s like to lose that dream? Because _ I do _.” Emily tries not to think about that day on the field, the twist of her knee when she stepped in a divot on a poorly-maintained pitch, how her leg went one way while her body went the other, but it’s difficult to keep her voice from shaking when she talks about it. It’s Christen’s turn to nudge Emily’s hand, a barely there touch that only Emily notices. 

She takes a deep breath. “It’s a big decision. That’s all I’m saying.”

“There are bigger things than soccer,” Russell says, and, again, someone is speaking more towards Reagan’s mother than at Reagan, and Reagan notices. She crosses her arms and looks at the ceiling.

“I think you guys should go.”

“Reagan-”

“No, it’s _ my _ body and _ my _ future. Let me think on this. And stop fighting about it.”

“We’re not fighting.”

“No one’s fighting.” Emily and Russell speak at the same time, though when their eyes meet, there’s a definite spark. For Emily, it’s anger. For Russell, it’s amusement. The three physicians turn to go. Christen files out first and Emily goes to leave, too, but Russell shoulders her as they both try to squeeze through the door at the same time. Emily stumbles a bit as she makes it through. 

“What’s your problem?” Emily hisses, rounding on Russell and flinging her arms out at her sides. That makes Russell reach for one of them, which pisses Emily off even _ more _. She takes a step back and away from him and points at him with both pointer fingers. “This isn’t even a surgical case right now.”

“It should be,” he says, tucking his hands into the pockets of his zip-up and looking unbearably smug. “Either now or the next time she comes into the hospital, and when it happens, I’m gonna do the cutting.” 

Emily’s jaw twitches. “Not if we have any say in it. You’re-”

“-right,” he cuts her off and saunters off, stethoscope swinging at his hip. “Call us when her mom changes her mind.”

As he says it, Mrs. Sullivan steps into the hallway looking a little bit like a lost child. Emily rubs her temples, sighs, and turns away from Russell, no matter how much she wants to get the last word in, and back to her patient’s mother instead. “Mrs. Sullivan?”

“You can call me Wendy.” 

Emily always finds that a little weird, because she barely feels old enough to be calling her parents’ friends by their first names, but she tries to ignore it. “Wendy, then. What’s going on? I thought we had a plan.”

Wendy has the sense to look apologetic, and she and Emily walk towards the waiting room. “Reagan kicked me out. She says people are making decisions for her without her input, and she wants time to think about it.” She pauses for a second, looks to Emily as if for help or comfort. Emily doesn’t have anything to say; _ Reagan _ is her patient, not her mom. “If it’s just going to spread anyway, why _ should _ we wait, Dr. Sonnett?”

It hits Emily like a punch directly to the stomach. She licks her lips, looks at Christen from across the nurses’ station desk, and finds her voice again. “Because,” she says simply, shoulders raising and falling in a shrug. “We won’t _ know _ if it’s going to spread until it does. It’s still localized to the bone, which is what we’d expect, and with radiation, we could see a lot of progress. Reagan still wants to play college soccer, right?” Wendy nods. “So why would we take away her chances of that?”

“Because 85% of kids with this disease eventually have to have the surgery anyway. Why give her false hope?” Emily tries not to picture Rose and offers a shrug.

“Who says it’s false?” With that, she breaks off from Wendy and turns down the hall. She needs a minute. Or sixty. She needs to take a step back, because it’s personal, and it shouldn’t be. Her story isn’t the same as Reagan’s, no matter if there are similarities, and she has to be a good _ doctor _, not just a good friend.

But hell if the idea of this doesn’t sting, just a little bit.

-

Emily still sits at their table at lunch. Rose slides a pudding cup towards her as some sort of peace offering, and Emily stares at it for a second or two before ripping off the lid and taking a bite. They’re talking about soccer when Lindsey finally arrives, ten minutes late, flyaways bursting out of her ponytail and an imprint from a surgical mask on her face. Rose is quick to point both of these things out while Emily simply nudges Lindsey’s foot with hers under the table and lets her steal her carrots, which she wasn’t eating anyway. 

“Hey,” Lindsey says once she’s gotten a few bites of her sandwich in and gulped down half a bottle of water. “I heard you might have an amputation on tap?”

Rose groans. Mal’s wide eyes flick from Emily to Lindsey and back again. Emily just shakes her head, spears a piece of chicken with more force than is really necessary. “Can’t imagine where you heard that.”

“Russell told me.” Emily scoffs and chews her chicken for a second, swallows and takes a drink before replying.

“Russell should keep his mouth shut.” There’s more bite to it than she really _ means _ , and Lindsey reaches for the hand on Emily’s knee and gives it a little squeeze. “Reagan’s been going the conservative route for months now, so I dunno why he’s sticking his big head into _ my _ patient’s care.”

“I think just because of the pathology, he’s just trying to-”

“Don’t tell me Russell is trying to help. He just wants to cut. Don’t _ defend _ him.” Emily pulls her hand away from Lindsey’s, and Lindsey frowns when Emily stands up. She’s not sure why her stomach’s twisting with something like anger and jealousy. Lindsey is _ her _ girlfriend. 

Which is probably why she says, “I stood up for you with Hayley and Hayley isn’t a dumbass.” 

Lindsey just blinks at her retreating back while Emily walks away. Her ears are burning again, but this time, it’s not anger that makes it happen.

It’s embarrassment. 

-

She’s in the doorway before her brain catches up with her feet. Emily raps the doorframe with her knuckles and takes a tentative step inside the room. “Hey,” she says, proud when her voice doesn’t crack on the end. “You still owe me a FIFA game.” 

Reagan looks so relieved that she immediately abandons her phone for the Switch and hands Emily a controller. They don’t even talk until the thirty-first minute, and it’s Reagan who breaks the silence. “I don’t really know what to do.”

Emily doesn’t respond at first, too busy focusing on making a slide tackle in the box, like she used to in real life and not on a TV screen. Once the ball is safely out of play again, she does speak, though her eyes are still focused on the television. “Well,” she says, laughing as one of her players skies the ball halfway down the field and Reagan flings a hand in the air. “What do you _ want _ to do?” 

Emily means about the surgery, but Reagan just says “I want to play soccer.” Emily’s already halfway to saying that she _ can _, and that the chemo takes time to work, and that radiation sucks but she promises to keep kicking her ass in FIFA every time she comes in for it, but Reagan keeps talking before Emily has the chance to. “But I can do that with the surgery. It’d be a different dream, I guess, but there are, you know, rec leagues for people with prosthetics now. And I’ve looked into it. It’s not against NCAA rules, either. There was this keeper who did it a few years ago. And maybe, someday, the paralympics will have more options…”

Emily scores a goal in the game and keeps her eyes on the screen as she listens quietly. She doesn’t know how this sixteen-year-old is handling the possibility of never playing high-level soccer again better than she did at twenty, but it’s making her mouth really dry. “Son? What d’you think?”

Oh. Right. She’s supposed to _sa_y something. “...I think that you’re gonna be great whatever you decide to do, but that professional FIFA gamer probably isn’t in your future.” 

Reagan promptly scores three unanswered goals and Emily ends up laughing so hard about it she can’t catch her breath. If anyone has the drive to do this, it’s this kid. 

-

An hour later, Emily opens the door to the on-call room and falls into bed -and right on top of Lindsey. Lindsey just shifts enough to make room and Emily ends up half on top of her in the bottom bunk, fingers curled in the front of her scrubs. “Are you still mad at me?” 

Lindsey’s voice makes her sound small and Emily reaches up to smooth back some of her hair and shakes her head. “No, I’m not mad. I was just...I don’t know, this kid reminds me of me a little bit, and I didn’t want to believe she might not play again.”

“You could have played longer, you know.” 

“Sure, but I was never the same, and you know how I have to be the best at everything.” 

“The best? Really? Because I’m pretty sure-”

“Shh.” Emily places a finger on Lindsey’s lips and then, when she shuts up, leans in to kiss her instead. “I guess I let it get too personal again.”

“Yeah, but you kind of have to. I don’t, because I just cut people open, fix what’s broken,and sew them back up again, but you have to spend _ time _ with your patients.” Lindsey props her chin on top of Emily’s head and chuckles softly. “I don’t know how you guys do that.”

“It’s a gift,” someone says from the top bunk, and Emily sits up, hits her head on the bottom of the top bunk, and curses. “Hey, Sonny. I’d like it if you guys didn’t do anything too X-rated while I’m napping, yeah?”

“Caitlin, don’t you have something to be doing?”

“Yeah, napping. Until _ you _ got here.”

A nap sounds good, actually, so Emily lets Lindsey pull her back in to her side and drifts off to sleep again, soothed by the beat of her girlfriend’s heart beneath her ear.

-

Reagan’s surgery is on Wednesday. 

Russell is going to assist, which makes Emily nervous, but Reagan likes him for some reason, and she gets to choose a second intern to help assist the orthopedic surgeon who’s going to be doing most of the cutting. 

It would’ve been easy to pick Lindsey, because Emily trusts her more than just about anyone in Portland, but she also kind of wants Lindsey to be able to sit in the gallery with her and hold her hand.

“Hey,” Emily says, rounding the corner and pointing. “You wanna scrub in on the AKA?” It feels _ weird _ talking about Reagan that way, but surgeons are weird, and they talk about patients based on their procedures. 

Rose nearly falls off of the gurney as she gets up, eyebrows darting back to her hairline. “Me?” She points to herself and Emily laughs.

“I mean, unless you wanna give it to Mal…”

“No, I want it, definitely. I’ve never seen one before.” 

“Cool, starts in an hour. Come on.”

Rose’s eyebrows furrow. “Where?” 

“You have to meet her first. She doesn’t want random people in her surgery.” Rose wrinkles her nose and Emily takes her hand, all-but dragging her to the elevators and pushing the button for floor three. “Surgeons are so fucking weird.”

“Aren’t you dating one?” Rose shoots back, but it’s definitely more of a question than a jab at her, and, honestly, Emily isn’t sure _ what _ she and Lindsey are doing, other than living and sleeping together. She definitely thinks of Lindsey as her girlfriend, has even called her that in phone calls with Emma, but they’ve never had that conversation. Emily’s not sure she wants to.

“Ask Lindsey,” Emily replies, a beat too late, and Rose clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth as the elevator doors spring open. Emily leads her down the hall to Reagan’s room and walks right inside, offering Wendy a wave and throwing herself into the spare chair beside Reagan’s bed. 

“You ready, champ?”

“I think so. After I beat this gym, I’ll be ready.” She gives Rose a glance and then leans towards Emily. “Why’s she look like she’s gonna throw up? Are you sure about this?”

“She’s bad at bedside manner, but she’s great at her job. I promise. Have I ever steered you wrong?”

“One time you told me to pick Real Madrid in FIFA just because you hate Messi, so…”

Emily waves Rose over, and Rose holds out her hand formally. “I’m Dr. Lavelle and I’ll be helping out with your surgery today. It’s, uh, nice to meet you?” It upturns on the end like a question and Reagan giggles, but she does return the handshake.

“She’s weird, like you. I like her.”

Rose smiles, even though Emily’s laughing.

-

Emily wishes she could hear what’s going on down there without scrubbing in or standing awkwardly in the back of the OR. She’s always hated the OR. Even as a medical student, she shirked her surgery duties as much as possible, offered to do consults or work in the outpatient clinic instead of spending hours upon hours standing there holding a retractor or a limb, like Ellie’s doing right now. Even Russell and Rose are just holding retractors while the attending works with the bone saw. 

Emily’s in the gallery, scattered among the surgery residents with Christen on one side and Lindsey on the other. Tobin’s right behind them with a granola bar in one hand and Christen’s in the other. Lindsey’s not touching her, not _ really _, though they're in contact from their shoulders to their shoes, but Lindsey’s focusing more on a stack of lab results and images in her lap. When Emily stiffens beside her, though, and her hand lands on Lindsey’s thigh, Lindsey just laces their fingers like it’s nothing, and the effect it has is instant. Emily’s shoulders lower, her jaw unclenches, and while she’s still worrying her bottom lip, she lets out the breath she was holding.

Lindsey glances at Emily and then to the surgical field and back again before stowing her paperwork into a folder and pulling their linked hands into her lap, letting both of hers hold one of Emily’s. “So they’re almost through the femur, now, and once that’s done, it’ll just be clean up and chasing those bleeders. See, Rose has that one now. Oh, man, he’s letting her use the saw -Russell’s gonna be pissed- and look. There it is.” 

Emily feels better with Lindsey narrating what’s happening. It lets her look away from the surgery, focus on her untied shoelaces instead, and the calm way Lindsey speaks is reassuring. She talks her through the rest of the procedure while she keeps Emily’s hand warm.

-

Emily is standing Reagan’s door two hours after the surgery. “Are you gonna go inside or just stare creepily like some kind of vampire?” Her voice is a little throatier than Emily remembers, but she’s sitting up in bed with something pulled up on her laptop. 

Barking out a laugh, Emily shuffles inside and takes a seat. “No FIFA?”

“I had to Google you. You were really good.” Emily blinks at the screen, recognizes the color of the uniforms and her own number sixteen. She swallows around a lump in her throat and pulls her feet up onto the chair. 

“I was, yeah.”

“What happened?”

“Bad injury,” she says with a shrug. When Reagan won’t stop staring at her, she adds, “I didn’t have the drive to keep pushing back. I wasn’t the same as before my injury and I just...couldn’t deal with it, couldn’t adapt my game to keep playing. So I quit.” She pauses, rolls her eyes at herself. “I don’t really recommend it.”

“Yeah, but now you’re a doctor, so it_ kind of _worked out.”

“Yeah, my second-choice career doesn’t suck.” 

They talk for half an hour, with Emily detailing a goal she scored during the college playoffs one year in excruciating detail, and she only leaves because Reagan’s fallen asleep slumped against her pillows. 

Christen catches her sneaking down the hallway. “Sonny?”

Emily circles back and leans her arms against the counter. Christen’s sitting at the computer, presumably charting. “What’s up?”

“You okay?” Christen’s using what she, Hayley, and Caitlin have decided to call her _ mom voice _ . Christen doesn’t really get angry at them (not unless they put a patient in danger or something which, thankfully, doesn’t happen often), but she _ does _ have the uncanny ability to be able to tell when one of them is upset or lying or just needs a bit of encouragement.

“Yeah. I just...really thought I was right.” Christen nods. Emily rests her cheek on her hands and lifts her shoulders in a shrug.

“If it makes you feel any better, I agree with you. If it were me, or my kid, I would have waited it out.” That _ does _ make her feel a little better. It means she wasn’t just reacting because of the situation, but because her medicine was sound. It wasn’t _ just _ personal, it was smart. Emily flashes her a grin. 

“Thanks, Chris. You want a coffee? It’s on me.” 

“Just tea? I’m done in an hour.”

“You got it.”

-

When the elevator stops on three, Lindsey’s already inside. She smiles that soft smile at her, only one of her dimples showing, and Emily returns it without really thinking about it. It’s pretty packed because it’s five o’clock, and that’s when most normal people get to leave the hospital and go home. For Emily, she’s still got three hours left on shift until her night coverage comes in. But Lindsey’s off, and they’ve made a habit of grabbing a coffee together if one of them has to stay late, because the caffeine won’t keep Lindsey up longer than it takes for Emily to get home, and Emily will get decaf on the nights she’s not on call. 

Since it’s so crowded, Emily’s stuck standing directly in front of the elevator doors. Lindsey’s right behind her, so Emily lets one of her hands fall to her side and her smile widens when Lindsey takes it in hers, laces their fingers. Not for the first time, Emily’s stuck thinking about how _ big _ Lindsey’s hands are in public -and also how good she is with them. Living with surgeons is weird, but dating them? Dating them is _ awesome _, actually. 

(She thinks they’re dating. They’ll have to talk about it. Someday.)

Emily steps out when the elevator reaches the lobby and pulls Lindsey along with her, turning in place to face her girlfriend and tugging her forward. She curls a finger in Lindsey’s belt loop and Lindsey tips her head and they share a brief kiss. Lindsey breaks it more quickly than she usually would, and Emily raises her eyebrows as she draws back.

“What? Is it because we’re still at work?”

“Um, no,” Lindsey says, reaching up to tuck some hair behind her ear. “It’s because of the woman staring at us.” 

Emily rolls her eyes and turns to face whoever it is. Portland’s progressive, but there are bigots everywhere. She’s got a comment ready to hurl at the person, but she ends up nearly choking on her tongue instead, stops walking entirely, and Lindsey runs into her back. 

“What?”

Emily sputters for a few seconds, speechless for the first time in forever, and she wants to stop this train before it crashes into them, but she can’t. 

Kelley’s already striding towards them, looking a little bit annoyed and a lot amused. “Whoa, Em, when your sister told me you were seeing somebody I didn’t know it was another doctor. You’ve got a type, huh?” 

Lindsey tries to pull her hand away, but Emily holds on for dear life. This cannot be happening. She closes her eyes, wills the nightmare to end, but when she opens them, Kelley’s still staring back at her. “Hey, I’m Kelley,” Kelley says, extending her hand for Lindsey to shake. Lindsey does, and for a second, she’s got Kelley’s hand in one of hers and Emily’s in the other. “You must be the woman sleeping with my wife.”


	4. ghosts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kelley didn't come back /just/ for Emily.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ask and you shall receive! (I apologize in advance.)
> 
> Hopefully the timeline of this makes sense and it flows...let me know!
> 
> Special thanks to servir for looking this over for me before I posted it and fixing my dumb mistakes. Chapter title comes from the awesome Jeremy Zucker. Here we go!

Suddenly, Lindsey’s not holding _ either _ of their hands. She’s staring blankly at Emily, then at Kelley, and back again. 

“Your _ wife _?” Lindsey says, low enough that it’s meant only for Emily, but Kelley’s all up in their space and hears it anyway.

“Oh, didn’t she tell you? Yeah, well,_ technically_, we’re separated but…” She waves her left hand, the one with the wedding band, in the air and shrugs. 

“I...gotta go.”

“Linds, wait. Let... let me explain-”

“You have to work.” Emily still has a three hour shift left, and now she’s not really sure she’s got a house to go back to after. Lindsey’s only two feet away, but it feels like an ocean between them, and Emily doesn’t feel the pressure behind her eyes, doesn’t even realize she’s crying until there are warm tracks along both of her cheeks, but, God, what a difference a day makes.

She doesn’t know where she belongs at all now.

Emily reaches for Lindsey’s wrist, but Lindsey takes a step back, squares her shoulders, and turns on her heel to walk away from her. Emily is left with Kelley, who’s looking at her with concern, which, really, isn’t even fair.

“Hey.” Her voice is different, now, softer, like it always was before everything fell apart. “Hey, Em, let me get your coffee.”

“I can buy my own coffee,” Emily spits, burying her shaking hands into the pockets of her zip-up and crossing the lobby towards the cafe that’s closing in -she glances down at her watch- fifteen minutes. The line’s long and now Emily’s fighting a headache, born from a combination of lack of caffeine and holding back tears. She swipes at her eyes with the back of her hand and ignores Kelley, who is standing beside her, close enough to touch if she reached out but far enough apart that they’re _ not touching_, because Emily doesn’t want to and Kelley won’t risk it.

The person at the front of the line is ordering six coffees, and Emily sighs loudly. She doesn’t turn her head, but she’s talking to Kelley when she speaks. “What are you doing here?” Kelley’s about to answer, but Emily holds up a hand. “Don’t say you’re here for me, or you can get back on a plane to California right now.” 

“I mean, it’s a combination of things,” Kelley says with a shrug. “But you’re not the only person I know here, Em.” 

Emily doesn’t have time to unpack all of that. She’s not even sure she _ wants _ to. She’s saved by her pager, which is a thought she’ll laugh about later. Much later, probably after a couple of beers. 

“I gotta go,” Emily mumbles, zipping up her jacket and cutting out of line to head towards the ER instead. Duty calls.

-

_ 2015 _

Emily meets Kelley in medical school. 

Well, _ Emily _ is in medical school. _ Kelley _ is a first-year resident. 

UVA Med has this program for its second year students called _ Medical Specialty Speed Dating. _ Before they start their clinical rotations next year, the students stop at tables featuring residents from a collection of different specialties, and each student spends three minutes at each station before moving on.

Kelley is Emily’s third station. The first two had been surgery and internal medicine, neither of which seemed interesting to Emily based on the sleep-deprived intern and bored-looking guy she’d spoken to. She’s just beginning to think that she might as well bail after the next one when she sees Kelley.

The woman is wearing a comfortable-looking green sweater, her hair damp and curling a little bit at the ends, and she’s smiling broadly at the kid who’s in front of Emily. She’s lounging in her booth, nursing what looks like beer in a fogged-up glass, and laughing at something the guy says as he walks away. The first thing Emily notices is that she’s really pretty. The _ second _ thing she notices is that she looks...happy. And well-rested. That’s encouraging. 

“Hey,” Emily says, throwing herself into the chair opposite Kelley and extending her hand to shake. “I’m Emily and I have no idea what I want to do with my life.”

“Well,” the stranger says, cracking a smile and giving her hand a firm shake, “I’d hope you might want to be a doctor, since you’re a little over halfway through earning that degree.” Emily laughs easily, and it makes the resident laugh, which makes Emily’s stomach twist pleasantly. It’s when the person across from her says “I’m Kelley. Peds.” that Emily realizes that she’s still holding onto her hand, and she yanks it back quickly and clasps her hands in front of her on the table instead. 

“I’m Emily,” Emily says, then remembers she already said that. Clearing her throat, she leans forward a bit in her seat. In the low lighting of this cafe the school had chosen for this, she can’t pick out individual freckles on Kelley’s face, but she can tell there are a lot of them. “And I haven’t slept in like 28 hours.”

“What are you on now?” Kelley asks sympathetically.

“Surgery, and I _ hate _ it. Those people are always so exhausted and miserable.”

“Right? One of my best friends is doing that and I’ve talked to her…” Kelley pauses to glance at her phone to check something. “Twice since July.” 

“Right, and you’ve probably known her forever!”

“Just since medical school, but it feels that way.” 

“So…” Emily can’t tell what color Kelley’s eyes are and it’s bothering her, so she looks at her mouth instead. That was… a mistake. Emily licks her own chapped lips out of reflex while Kelley catches her staring. “Uh, why peds?”

Kelley wrinkles her nose. “Oh, are we doing that?”

“Doing...doing what?” 

“The specialty speed dating thing. I thought we were just speed dating, for a sec, but we can do that if you want.” Emily blinks wordlessly at her. Kelley takes that as a cue to continue and keeps talking. “I picked Peds because I’m a lot like a kid myself. I got to spend half the day yesterday playing videogames to try and induce a seizure in this kid.”

“No way.”

“Yeah, it was awesome.” Kelley grins at her, pauses to take a sip from her drink. “But, really, kids don’t really _ get _ it when they’re sick, and being able to kind of break it down into terms they understand is kind of cool. Plus, there are always popsicles on the Peds floor.”

Emily’s distracted by the way Kelley’s nose wrinkles when she laughs. Now Kelley’s staring at _ Emily _, and Emily shakes her head to clear her head a little bit. “What’s your day like?”

Kelley is halfway through a story about how she got lost on her first day in the hospital when the bell rings to signal that they’re supposed to switch. Emily groans. Kelley chuckles again and leans back and away from her. Emily hadn’t realized that their arms were touching until Kelley moves and she feels cold. “Nice meeting you, Em.”

_ Em_. No one calls her that. It makes her heart stutter a little bit, and Emily feels stupid when another student clears her throat from behind her chair. Giving an awkward wave, Emily climbs to her feet and listens to a guy try to talk her into becoming a radiologist for three minutes, a bored girl in pathology, and then, ten minutes later, she swings back to Kelley’s table and cuts off the guy behind her. 

“Hey, could you, uh, go away?” This makes Kelley laugh again, and Emily thinks of it as a personal accomplishment. He gives her a look, but when it seems clear that Emily isn’t going to move, he walks off to the next empty space. Emily sits down again and reaches across the table for Kelley’s beer and takes a swig. Kelley quirks a brow at her. “It’s been a long day,” Emily says with a shrug. 

“Tell me about it.” 

“Well, I met this girl and I made a fool out of myself. Also, earlier, I got bowel on my shoes.”

“That’s rough, buddy.” 

“I think the girl thinks I’m funny, though.”

“Does she?”

“Maybe.”

“How can you tell?”

Emily holds Kelley’s glass between her palms and considers. “There’s this little crinkle by her eyes. Also, she didn’t tell me to go away when I came back for seconds.”

“Do you come here often?” Kelley asks her, and Emily looks around.

“Monet’s?”

“No, specialty speed dating.”

“Oh. No. First time.”

“First time for everything, then.”

When the bell interrupts them a second time, Kelley slides her phone number across the table and Emily feels like a person again for the first time in about a week.

-

**Sonny:** r u any good at anatomy?  
**Sonny: ** this is not a trick question i’m actually going to fail this exam  
**KO, MD:** smooth, em. 

Three little dots appear and disappear while Emily chews on her thumbnail. She looks back at her textbook, pulls up some practice questions on her laptop, and misses three of them before scrolling mindlessly through Instagram before the notification pops up.

**KO, MD: **you can come over and study if you want. i have the day off.

So, Emily’s standing outside Kelley’s apartment half an hour later, armed with her books, laptop, and a pizza. She kind of feels like she’s going to throw up, but she knocks on the door anyway. There’s a crash from inside followed by a series of curses before Kelley appears in the door, wearing a Stanford sweatshirt that’s a size too big, her hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, and, oh man, is Emily sunk. 

“Hey. Is that for me?” She gestures to the box of pizza, which Emily hands over automatically.

“Well,” she says, stepping over the threshold and kicking off her sneakers. “Not the whole thing. But I’m okay with sharing.” 

It takes about three of these study sessions for Emily to start feeling comfortable in Kelley’s space. It’s a small, two-bedroom apartment, and Kelley supposedly has a roommate but they’re never home. Adam (Was that the name? Emily hadn’t been paying attention because Kelley had been resting her hand on Emily’s knee while quizzing her on the anatomy of the thoracic cavity) is a surgical resident, so they rarely share the same space.

Now, she’s sprawled out across a few pillows on Kelley’s living room floor, an arm thrown over her eyes as she concentrates on what Kelley is asking her from her spot draped over the couch. “The most common bacteria to cause pneumonia in kids over two.”

“I suck at micro.”

“You suck at everything, Em, when you haven’t learned it yet.” She nudges Emily’s side with a socked foot and Emily squirms away. “Pneumonia. Two year old. Go.”

“This doesn’t work for me,” Emily whines, lifting her arm enough to peek out at Kelley. “I’m like a dog. I need motivation to do stuff.”

Kelley props herself up on an elbow, abandoning her flashcards and leaning over to tuck a flyaway strand of hair behind Emily’s ear. “What kind of motivation? Like, you pick the movie motivation or…” Kelley waggles her eyebrows. Suddenly, Emily’s mouth is really dry. She licks her lips. Kelley mirrors the action and, _ oh. _

“...the second one?”

“Okay.” Kelley looks at her expectantly. Emily just looks at her. 

“What...what was the question?”

“Most common bacterial cause of pneumonia in children under two. Come on, I _ know _ I’ve told you about kids with this.” Kelley’s prodding at her side with her pointer finger and now Emily’s staring at her hands, which is a really bad place to be staring. She racks her brain for something, anything, and she _ does _ kind of remember Kelley, sleepy and tucked into her side, telling her about a kid with-

“Streptococcus pneumoniae!” 

“Atta girl.” Kelley leans off of the couch, one arm braced on the carpet on Emily’s other side, and kisses her. Her hair is down and it curtains them while she does it, and Emily’s brain has shut down so she barely kisses back before Kelley is drawing back and away from her, but her lips still tingle afterwards.

“Treatment for that same kid?”

Emily aces the test.

-

Kelley’s exhausted. She’s on hour 20 of a twenty-four hour shift, and she’s dragging while trying to input admission orders for the pneumonia case she just brought up from the ER. She can’t spell to save her life. And her pager will _ not _ stop _ ringing_.

A cup of coffee appears in front of her, and then the person who brought it. Emily smiles at her, ducks her head to press a kiss to her cheek, and then continues down the hallway. 

“We’re here for a tour,” she says over her shoulder, offering a mock salute.

“What’s this?”

“It’s coffee?” Kelley is silent. “To drink. Because you look like death, no offense.”

“None taken.”

-

_ 2019 _

Tobin’s sitting at the computer in the Peds floor’s nursing station trying to write an operative note with little success. She’s exhausted, on hour 26 of a 28 hour shift and running a little bit on fumes. She’s been trying to dictate this note for ten minutes and the typos are running off of the screen, so she abandons the mic in favor of typing, even if she sucks at it. Where are her interns to be doing this sort of thing for her, anyway?

“‘Scuse me,” someone says from down the hall. Tobin doesn’t look up from the screen, though she thinks that voice sounds a little bit familiar, like a voice she used to know. “I think I’m lost. I’m looking for the pediatrics floor, but you look like a surgeon.” 

It’s the way her voice upturns at the end that gives it away. Tobin straightens in her chair and her head pops up over the counter almost comically while she blinks at the person across from her. “Kel?” 

Kelley opens her arms wide. “Hey, Tobs.” 

Tobin scrambles to her feet and around the desk, but once she reaches Kelley all she does is reach for her upper arms and lean in, blinking at her like she doesn’t quite believe Kelley’s actually there. She hasn’t slept in over twenty-four hours. It’s totally possible.

Then Kelley laughs, that deep, belly-laugh Tobin used to be able to pick out from the crowd, and she knows. “What the fuck?” Tobin wonders, tugging Kelley into an unceremonious hug. Kelley laughs again, pats her back soothingly and presses playful kisses into her shoulder. 

“Nice to see you, too, Tobin,” Kelley murmurs, pulling back enough to look at Tobin properly and resting her hands on her shoulders. “I was actually looking for Chris, but I’m not really surprised to find you where she should be.” That was the way it had always been, all the way back to when Christen had been a year below her at Stanford Med. It was hard to imagine Christen without Tobin.

(It used to be hard to imagine Kelley without Emily, too.)

“I think Christen’s sleeping, but I can-”

“Kelley?!” Christen is, as it turns out, _ not _ sleeping. She’s at the other end of the hallway, nursing a cup of hot tea she had to get herself, and she’s grinning so widely that Kelley feels, for the first time since she landed in Portland, like she’s home. Christen practically bounds down the corridor and Kelley spins away from Tobin in time to catch her in a tight hug, nearly lifting her right off of her feet and laughing into her hair. 

“See,” Kelley says, turning them around a couple of times before setting Christen back onto her feet. “_This _ is the kind of reaction I was hoping for.” 

Tobin rolls her eyes, shoves Kelley’s shoulder lightly, and retreats back to her cubby to try and finally finish her charting. Christen’s still latched onto Kelley’s upper arm, like she’s worried she’ll disappear if she doesn’t.

“What are you doing here?” There’s another unspoken question that hangs between them as Christen leads them around the desk into a couple of vacant chairs. _ Does Emily know? _Kelley sinks into one. Christen’s still standing. 

“I applied for that open peds hospitalist job,” Kelley says. Tobin turns around in her seat to stare at her. Christen arches a single eyebrow. “And I think I’m gonna take it.”

-

Emily accidentally ends up in the basement because she’d been taking the steps two-at-a-time, her mind racing. Her entire life in Portland has been turned upside down in the span of the last twenty minutes. She wishes there was a rewind button and then maybe a freeze button, because what Emily _ really _ wants is to go back to this morning, warm and comfortable and curled around Lindsey instead of hunching over in a damp stairwell, hands on her knees, heart racing and unable to catch her breath.

This has happened before, but not since medical school. Her hands are shaking on her knees and she can feel her heart in her throat and it kind of feels like she might be dying. If a doctor dies in an empty stairwell and no one is there to hear them, how likely are they to be resuscitated?

While her head spins, Emily counts backwards from one hundred. She tries to remember what her therapist back in Virginia had taught her. She opens her eyes and tries to find something to focus on that isn’t how her own body feels like it’s shutting down. The corridor is mostly empty, but there’s an empty soda can in one corner. 

Emily focuses on everything she can notice about that can. It’s red. It’s crushed on one side so it won’t sit flat. It’s missing its pull tab, like someone yanked it off. It’s from at least a year ago, because it’s got last year’s Christmas label on it. It’s diet. 

By the time she lists all of these things to herself, her breathing has slowed and so has her heart. Emily flexes her hands a few times, takes a deep, steadying breath, and goes back upstairs. She’s still got a job to do, here, Kelley or no Kelley.

-

_ 2016 _

Emily is studying for part one of the licensing boards, which means she wakes up at seven, goes for a run, and then puts in an eight-to-ten hour study day. It means that she barely cooks, her apartment’s a mess, and that she’s seen Kelley less and less recently, because between her study schedule and Kelley’s work schedule, they keep missing each other. 

She’s taken to studying at Kelley’s place, though, because it’s clean and quiet and Kelley’s roommate, even when she’s there, doesn’t bother her much. She’s a doctor, too, so it’s not like she’s got tons of free time. Emily is sprawled out across the floor of the living room with her review book open, several highlighters haphazardly strewn across the floor, and her laptop open to a set of review questions. She’s chewing on the end of her pen as she agonizes over an answer choice she’s not sure of.

“If you don’t know it, you should just skip it.” Emily jumps nearly a foot in the air when Kelley’s voice filters over at her from over the couch. “You should guess and keep going, come back to it if you have time later. There’s no penalty for wrong answers.”

Emily sighs and clicks something before pausing the question block and rolling onto her back to stare blankly at the ceiling. “I know that makes sense, but my brain doesn’t really work like that. I have to do them in sequence.”

“I know, but maybe just for the day of the test…”

“You say that like it’s easy,” Emily complains, flipping the pages of her review book aimlessly. Kelley vaults over the back of the couch, lands on the edge of the cushions, and reaches for her wrist. She turns Emily’s hand over, threads their fingers and traces the back of it with her thumb. 

“Hey,” Kelley says, pulling at her arm a little bit. “Put your shoes on. Let’s go.”

“I still have six more questions in this set.”

“I don’t think they’re going anywhere. Come on, Em, let’s go.” Emily lets Kelley pull her up onto her feet and methodically puts on her shoes and jacket, pouting at Kelley all the while. Kelley takes her hand again as soon as they’re out of the apartment, and they walk along the street in comfortable silence for two blocks before Emily bothers to break it.

“Where are we going?”

“Nowhere.”

Emily stops walking. Kelley doesn’t. Their hands lose each other in the process and Kelley turns around to walk backwards for a few steps, tucks her hands into her pockets and lifting them so her open jacket looks a little bit like a cape. “What do you mean nowhere? I have _ stuff _ to do, Kel.”

Kelley dances back to Emily and reaches for her hand again, taking one in both of hers, and pulls Emily along a few steps. “You needed to get out of your head for a while. I can tell. Here, how about this.” Kelley ducks into a small, hole-in-the-wall coffee shop -the same one where they’d met at speed dating last year. Emily can’t help the smile that curls just one corner of her mouth upwards. 

“Did you know,” Kelley’s saying, half-dragging Emily to the counter and looping her arm through Emily’s, “if you tell the barista what you usually get at, like, Starbucks, they’ll make you something original they swear you’ll like and name it after you.”

Emily narrows her eyes slightly. “What’s yours?”

“The O’Hara is a white chocolate mocha with a hint of peppermint. I highly recommend it.” Emily wrinkles her nose and then stares silently at the poor teenager behind the counter when it’s their turn.

“Uh…”

“She usually takes an Americano,” Kelley says helpfully, and Emily looks at her, wondering when they’d gotten to the point that Kelley knew her coffee order. The kid nods and grabs a cup, looking between them expectantly. “Emily Sonnett.” He nods and disappears behind the espresso machine, asking Kelley if she’ll take the usual along the way.

Five minutes later, the barista presents Emily with what he calls the “Sonny Side Up”, which is really just an Americano with an extra shot of espresso and a bit of caramel flavor. 

It’s delicious and Emily hums contentedly as she sits across from Kelley at a table near the window. She glances at her phone, at the time, and thinks she’ll give herself fifteen minutes of bliss before she has to return to studying.

Kelley’s staring at her. 

“What?” Emily asks, taking a drink and leaning back in her seat. Her foot nudges Kelley’s lightly. “Do I have something on my face?”

“Move in with me.” Kelley says, and Emily’s eyebrows race towards her hairline. Kelley smiles sheepishly and leans across the table to rest her hands over Emily’s. “We’re in a good place and I live close to campus, and your rotations will be at the hospital in a few months and we live right across the street.”

Kelley looks so earnest, and Emily _ wants _. She hides her face behind her mug and says, “Okay.” 

Kelley makes her put the coffee cup down so she can kiss her across the table. 

-

_ 2019 _

Christen’s shift ends before Tobin’s, so she goes to Joe’s with Kelley. They’re tucked away in a corner table, Kelley nursing a beer and Christen with a glass of wine she doesn’t even really want. She has to be back at work by seven the next morning. 

“Why here?” Christen asks her. When Kelley doesn’t answer, she follows her gaze across the bar. There’s a group of surgery interns huddled at the bar, and Christen chews her bottom lip as she watches Russell buy them all another round of shots. Lindsey throws hers back easily and asks for another one. Christen kicks Kelley under the table. “Kel, why are you here? There are pediatrics jobs everywhere.”

Kelley pulls her attention back to Christen and shrugs, sipping at her beer before answering, “I just miss you guys.” Christen purses her lips and Kelley answers what she hasn’t asked. “You and Tobin and, yeah, Emily, too.”

“Are you here to get her back?” Christen sounds doubtful. If she’s honest, Kelley is, too. “Because she was doing really well out here, Kelley, and I don’t think it’s fair-”

“Hey, who have you known longer?” Kelley cuts her off. She sighs and combs a hand through her hair. “I miss her. I miss her way more than I _ thought _ I would. I was miserable in California, Chris. I was screwing up at work. A kid almost _ died_. And it’s just, I know I need her...whatever way she’ll have me.”

“But are you here to get her back?” They’re both looking at Lindsey Horan, now, who is throwing darts at the board with such precision it’s almost scary. 

“I’m gonna try.”

Christen sighs.

-

When Emily finally reaches the ER, her patient is crashing.

Austin is a 13-year-old boy who was shot on his way home from school. The sheets on the gurney are stained red and his mother is openly sobbing at his bedside. Emily’s mind is blank as soon as she rounds the corner. The nurses have called the code and the heart monitor above him is flat. “God dammit.” Emily elbows her way into the too-small room and starts directing traffic.

“Somebody recording? Okay, Mark, can you get the paddles ready if we need them? Where’s pharmacy?” Emily just launches herself up onto the bed and starts doing compressions, ignoring the fact that her pink scrubs are going to be unusable after this. The blood is coming from his abdomen. “Get surgery in here!” The kid’s losing blood by the pint as Emily does CPR. “What’s his blood type?” No one knows. Emily swings her head around to survey the room. 

“Travis, ask his mom if she knows and get someone to the blood bank _ now_.” 

Tobin’s there. Thank God, Tobin’s there. She pushes at Emily’s shoulder to shift her on the bed a little bit and starts applying pressure to the wound. “What do we got?”

“I just got here, I don’t-”

“Not talking to you, Sonnett. Mark?” The nurse goes through the kid’s past medical history and the events that brought him into the ED while Emily keeps pace to _ Staying Alive _ with her compressions. 

“You need to swap out?”

“I’m good.”

“Are you-”

“I’m _ good_, Dave.” Emily’s arms are shaking as she counts in her head. Respiratory is there and makes her hold compressions while they intubate, and Emily watches the clock. Five seconds. Ten. 

“Go.” She resumes compressions. 

“Epi,” someone, probably Tobin, says, and the nurses give it. “Hold compressions.” Emily does, and holds her breath with it. She’d been having a panic attack in the stairway while this poor kid bled out, and she can only blame Kelley for part of it. She’s a _ doctor_. She has a _ job _ to do. 

Everyone watches the heart monitor. It stays flat...and then, miraculously, there’s a blip, and then an upswing, and that’s a heartbeat. Emily almost starts crying. She hops off of the gurney and takes Tobin’s place, applying pressure to the wound while Tobin steps aside to look at the films.

“There it is. Lodged in the abdominal cavity. Looks like it hit the SMA.” The gauze is soaking through. A nurse arrives with blood and they hang it, but they’re going to need more. 

“Tobin,” Emily calls. “Tobin, do you have someone with you?”

“Mal’s somewhere.”

“Here!” Mal pops out from nowhere and nods, immediately replacing Emily’s hands with her own as Emily exits the room. She’s covered in blood, she needs to change her clothes, but Austin doesn’t have time for that. So Emily sprints down through Providence Medical Center towards the blood bank.

She has a job to do.

-

_ 2017 _

They’re in Oregon over Christmas, because Kelley had a conference there the week before. It’s Emily’s first Christmas away from her family. Even the last couple of years, she’d been able to sneak away for a few days to get home, and she’s freezing and missing Emma and her parents and their dog, sulking on the hotel bed with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s and a bad Hallmark movie on TV. She points her spoon at the screen. “This is unrealistic.” Kelley doesn’t respond to her. In fact, she’s been in the bathroom a really long time. They’d both split a pizza for dinner, and Emily feels fine, so she’s not really sure what’s going on in there. She’d been in the shower a long time. “Kel?”

Nothing. Emily’s climbing to her feet when Kelley bursts out of the bathroom looking frazzled, her hair sticking up and her sweater on backwards. “Is this a new fashion thing?” Kelley swears and shrugs out of her sweater and Emily’s eyes linger just a little bit on the exposed skin. She still can’t count all those freckles, even though she’s tried many times by now. 

“Come on, let’s go for a walk.” Kelley turns the TV off and Emily throws the ice cream lid at her. 

“It’s _ snowing_, Kelley. A Southern belle like me isn’t made for this.”

“Come on, it’s Christmas. Let’s go look at the lights.” Kelley’s eyes are so bright and her smile is so big that Emily can’t really say no. She shoves her feet into boots, puts on a puffy coat over the too-big Stanford hoodie she’d stolen, and plops a hat on her head. 

Kelley’s ready in half the time and holds a gloved hand out to her, which Emily takes. The things she does for love. They walk along the snowy streets of downtown Portland, window-shopping and drinking hot chocolate, as the sun sets and the temperature drops. Emily leans into Kelley and Kelley lets her leech her of her warmth, an arm wrapped securely around her shoulders. 

“Where are we going, Kel?” Emily wonders once they’ve been out for almost an hour. She can’t feel her toes and she’s pretty sure her nose is going to fall off. Kelley’s face is red with the cold, too, but she looks so damn cute that Emily can’t even find it in herself to be mad.

“Here,” Kelley says finally, as the brightly-lit Christmas tree comes into view. It’s in the center of town, at least twelve feet tall, and decorated with twinkling white lights that blink from beneath the snow. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

“Yeah.” But Emily’s not looking at the tree anymore. She’s looking at Kelley, and Kelley’s wide-eyed wonder at this tree, and she thinks that, yeah, she loves her and, yeah, it was worth getting out of her warm bed for this. She kisses Kelley and Kelley kisses her back and then takes a few steps closer to the massive fir. 

Emily follows a step or two behind, her boots crushing the snow beneath them.

And then Kelley turns around. She drops to one knee and pulls a box out of her jacket pocket, and she’s wearing that nervous smile, the same one she wore when she asked Emily to move in and again when she met Emily’s parents for the first time. Emily’s stomach is somewhere in her throat. 

“Em,” Kelley begins, then laughs and shakes her head. “I had this whole thing planned out to say to you, but, really, I just wanted to say that I wanna spend my Christmases with you and that I can’t imagine doing it with somebody else. So, would you marry me?”

“Your pants are all wet.” Kelley ignores this and keeps looking up at her expectantly. Emily pulls her to her feet by the front of her jacket and kisses her again, not caring how chapped both of their lips are. 

“Is that a yes?”

“It’s a yes.”

-

_ 2019 _

Emily catches the person who’d been delivering Austin’s blood halfway to the blood bank. “B positive, right?” She’s breathless and trying to grab the three blood bags from the orderly, who seems concerned. 

“For OR 1?”

“Yeah.”

“OR 1, right?” Emily’s already got the bags in her hands and she’s running headlong back to the surgical floor. She hates the OR, but she puts on a scrub cap and a mask anyway and bursts into OR 1 just after Tobin, Mal, and Dr. Ellis have made the first cuts. It’s an exploratory laparotomy. They have to find the source of the bleeding and stop it, before the kid bleeds out on the table. 

She helps hang the first bag of blood and then stands in the corner while they work.

She’s still wearing the red-splattered scrubs and Margie, the OR nurse, helps guide her to the locker room. Emily changes, then sprawls out across one of the benches. Her shift’s over. So is Mal’s. She’ll wait. 

She unlocks her phone for the first time in hours and her panic spikes when she sees an alert from Lindsey. 

Actually, there are several messages.

**Linds:** are you coming home?

Emily feels like she might cry again. Two hours ago, she didn’t think she had anywhere to go, but here’s Lindsey, offering it to her. 

But there’s more.

**Linds: **or are you going to be staying with your wife?

The next message was sent almost two hours later.

**Linds: **miss u

Emily has learned, after living with and sleeping with Lindsey, that she stops using punctuation when she’s drunk. Emily presses her hand to her forehead and then looks at the clock mounted on the wall.

It’s black with a white clockface. The minute hand is black, the second hand is red. They never changed it for daylight savings. There are only four numbers on it, the rest are dots. It’s not perfectly round. There are-

Mal nearly collapses beside her. Emily sits up so quickly that she almost throws up. “What’s up?” 

“We got it. Tobin had to do a running whip stitch at one point, but no more bleeding. Even got the bullet.” Emily puts her head in her hands and really does cry, now, the hot tears landing on her sneakers. Mal puts an arm around her, gives her a sideways hug, and then stands up to change. Emily’s still pressing her fingers into her temples when Mal’s ready to leave, and she hovers almost uncertainly. 

“Are you coming?”

Emily wonders, briefly, if Mal knows. The way she glances over Emily’s shoulder tells her she must know _ something. _ “I’ll, um, I’ll see you there.” 

-

_ 2019 (Spring) _

Emily’s been sweating for the last hour and a half, suffered through a few speeches, and listened to about a hundred names get called before her own. She’s just focused on not tripping over the too-long robe as she steps up on stage behind Michael Samuels. She squints into the crowd, finds her sister first, and shoots her family a thumbs up and a smile. Her mom’s crying. 

“Emily Ann Sonnett!”

She takes a breath and walks across the stage, shakes the hands of three of her professors, and accepts her medical school diploma from one of them before following Mike to the other side of the stage.

Part of the medical school graduation ceremony includes being “hooded” by a physician. Lots of people just have the faculty or a mentor do it, but if the students have a family member who holds the MD degree, they can do the honors. 

Kelley’s standing there waiting for her, looking proud but a little tentative. Two months ago, Emily would have stuck her tongue out at her when the cameras couldn’t see. Today, she just offers her a tight-lipped smile. 

She turns around and Kelley puts the hood over her shoulders. Emily knows there’s a photographer waiting to take a shot, so she turns around and steps into Kelley’s waiting arms. Kelley holds fast and tight to her, a few moments too long. The kid behind her has to walk around them to get off stage. 

“Kelley.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Okay.” 

Emily breaks the hug and walks off stage. If Kelley’s crying, people will probably just think they’re happy tears. 

-

_ 2019 _

Emily thinks about knocking when she gets to the house. She feels like that might be warranted. But she ends up using the key because she’s not sure Lindsey will even be awake right now and slips inside. She sheds her coat and kicks off her shoes, thinks she’ll eat a bowl of cereal after she showers. She still feels like she’s got Austin’s blood on her, even if she washed up at the hospital.

As she pads towards the stairs, Lindsey appears in the door to the kitchen. Emily stops in her tracks, shoulders slumping, eyes going to the floor. “Hey,” Lindsey says, her voice low. 

“Hey. Listen, we probably-”

Lindsey shakes her head. “I’m drunk.” She definitely is. There’s a little slur to her voice. Emily knows that’s her fault, and she wishes she’d just been honest with her from the start. “We can talk tomorrow, maybe.” Lindsey brushes by her and is halfway up the stairs when she turns back to her. “I think you should probably sleep in your room tonight.”

-

Emily goes to her room after her shower.

She doesn’t get any sleep, though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that's that!
> 
> Follow me on twitter @cornerkix_. Feel free to chat...or yell, as it may be.


	5. falling like the stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tobin blinks at her, a tentative smile stretching across her face as she combs a hand through her hair. “Actually,” she says, plopping a skinnier, brightly-colored chart into Lindsey’s lap. “We have a consult, and Dr. O’Hara’s requesting you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! The block is real. 
> 
> All typos are mine. I wanted to get this out to you guys before I left for the holidays, so forgive me for any mistakes or pacing issues. 
> 
> Also...sorry?

Lindsey wakes up before her alarm. Again.

It’s the fifth third time in as many nights that she’s tossed and turned all night, and only part of it is because she worked a 24-hour-shift two days ago that royally messed up her sleep schedule. Because she’d been working a couple of late nights and Emily had been working days, they haven’t talked about it.

Lindsey’s not so sure she _ wants _ to. It’s much easier to just pretend that it was all about sex, because, then, they can keep sharing this house without Lindsey wanting to die at any given moment. 

Emily is in the kitchen when Lindsey shuffles into it in search of coffee. It’s an hour earlier than she’s usually up, so the timer wasn’t set, but Emily’s got a cup in front of her that’s still steaming, so Lindsey just tries not to look at her too hard and makes a beeline for the counter instead.

It’s impossible not to notice the dark circles beneath Emily’s eyes or the furrow in her brow or how she’s chewing her chapped lip so hard she’s going to make it bleed, though. It hits Lindsey like a truck when she recognizes the oversized Yale sweatshirt Emily’s wearing. 

Emily’s staring at her phone and, other than the light above the sink, it’s the only light in the kitchen. Lindsey pours herself a cup of coffee, adds in cream and sugar, and takes a long sip before considering her options. 

The last couple of days, she’s just been ducking into the shower to avoid this, but the way Emily’s shoulders are slumped and the vice grip she has on her phone gives Lindsey pause. She takes a deep breath, squares her shoulders, and slides into the chair opposite Emily. 

Emily, for her part, blinks at her and tips her head to the side. When she opens her mouth to say something, she seems to reconsider, and when she speaks, her voice is wrecked, and not in the way Lindsey’s used to. She’s been crying, Lindsey thinks. She tries not to feel bad about it. 

“Morning, sunshine.” Emily winces a little bit but keeps going, sliding a basket of muffins across the table like some kind of fucked up peace offering. “Mal’s stress baking.” She doesn’t elaborate, but they’re both fully aware that it’s not _ work _ that has Mal stressing. Lindsey _ does _ feel bad about that, actually.

“Morning.” Lindsey picks up a blueberry muffin and breaks it in half, sliding the larger piece back towards Emily on a napkin. This is what their lives are now: tiptoeing around each other and smalltalk. 

Only, Lindsey can’t do smalltalk with Emily, because smalltalk with Emily always comes back to Kelley, who is the only person Lindsey’s been avoiding more than Emily herself since Kelley arrived. She watches Emily make herself bleed by biting down too hard while she stares at her phone and steels herself. “What’s up?”

She almost regrets it immediately, but the way Emily’s face relaxes almost makes it all worth it. “Kelley wants to talk. And we probably should talk, but you and I still haven’t talked, and we should talk, too.” Almost.

Lindsey tries not to choke on a too-large bite of muffin and chases it with a gulp of coffee that burns the top of her mouth. “...what’s there to talk about? You’re married. Your wife is here. I’m just...some girl you met at a bar.” She tries to sound okay with it, really, but her voice kind of shakes on the end. 

Emily shifts in her chair and reaches for her, thinks better of it, and ends up letting her palm rest flat against the kitchen table instead. She drums her fingers against it and ducks her head to try and catch Lindsey’s eye. “You weren’t. You aren’t.” 

It’s the most sincere thing Emily’s said to her in days. But Lindsey doesn’t miss the past tense.

“So, what happened?”

Lindsey doesn’t really want to know. She wants to go back to last week when she thought Emily was going to be her girlfriend or, better yet, go back to June and not get totally drunk the night before her internship started. 

She also kind of wants Emily to tell her she’s not going to get back with Kelley, but that seems far fetched. 

The openness of Emily’s face disappears. She leans back into her chair, pulls her feet up onto it, and hides half of her face with her mug. “This isn’t strong enough to get into that,” Emily says with a shrug. 

“Fine,” Lindsey says, pushing her chair out and standing up. Emily looks like she’s going to reach out again, but doesn’t, and Lindsey can’t decide if she wishes she would or wouldn’t. But Lindsey has to be at work in an hour and a half, and she can probably get a better case if she gets to the hospital before Rose, so if Emily is just going to stare at her from across their dimly lit kitchen, Lindsey is going to go do something productive.

Until Emily’s fingers curl around her wrist as she turns to go and she presses her thumb into Lindsey’s pulse point. Lindsey wills her body to stop reacting to that, but she can _ feel _ her pulse jump, just slightly, and she knows Emily feels it, too. 

“After work. You’re off at a normal hour tonight, yeah?”

“5:30.”

“I’m supposed to talk to her today, so meet me at Joe’s at six?” When she doesn’t answer right away, Emily gives Lindsey’s wrist a little squeeze. “You can’t ignore me. We live together.”

“Six?”

“Six.”

“I’ll see you at six, then.”

It makes Emily smile the first real smile Lindsey’s noticed all week. She wishes she didn’t notice that.

-

Rose is in the locker room when Lindsey gets there. Of course she is. She’s already dressed and has a few patient charts draped over the benches. “I wish she wasn’t married,” Rose says from her spot on the floor.

Lindsey’s shoulders involuntarily hunch. She can’t find her words for a second too long, and Rose kicks at her shoe. “Why?” She finally says, and Rose takes her foot back and shoots her a smirk.

“Because you used to spend an extra half an hour in bed when she wasn’t just your roommate.”

Lindsey changes out of her street clothes and into scrubs. She’s always kind of wondered why they make their work clothes so comfortable. She’s exhausted, into her bones, and if she could sneak into the peds on-call room, she’d probably be able to sleep for four hours. 

But she hasn’t been there since she and Emily stopped doing...whatever they were doing. She sits down to tie her shoelaces just as Rose claims a chart and hugs it to her chest. “Dibs.”

“What do you think I’m going to do?” Lindsey wonders, switching to the opposite shoe. “Fight you for it?”

Rose considers. “Maybe.” She hops to her feet and shrugs into her white coat. She hesitates in the doorway. “Don’t you wanna know what you’re missing?”

Lindsey obliges her with a nod.

“Pericardial window, baby. There’s a couple of ortho cases in there or, if you want, there’s an elective plastics case that Russell will pay you two paychecks for.”

Before Lindsey even has a chance to react, Tobin appears in the doorway. Rose gives her a little mock salute and sidesteps her to get out into the hallway. “Hey, Lindsey,” her resident says, walking over and picking up a couple of the charts Rose had abandoned and beginning to flip through them. 

“Hey. I was thinking maybe I could get in on that amputation? Or if you wanted it, I’ll take the skin graft.” 

Tobin blinks at her, a tentative smile stretching across her face as she combs a hand through her hair. “Actually,” she says, plopping a skinnier, brightly-colored chart into Lindsey’s lap. “We have a consult, and Dr. O’Hara’s requesting you.”

Lindsey nearly falls off of the bench in her haste to get up. She stares at Tobin. Tobin stares back. “Seriously? Tobin, come on. I know she’s your friend or whatever, but I thought…”

Tobin holds up a hand, stopping Lindsey mid-thought. “Hey, I’m your resident first and you can learn something from Dr. O’Hara. She’s good at her job. Or would you rather waste another day in clinic doing stitches and setting bones?” 

“I’ll take the consult.”

-

Kelley is early.

It’s not her first day, but it’s her first day on the floors. That’s why she’s standing in line at the cafe, scrolling through Instagram and missing Emily. She’s looking at photos from two Christmases ago, Emily’s cheeks red from the cold but her smile as bright as the snow. 

“You really have to start living in the present, Dr. O’Hara.” Christen singsongs from behind her. There’s a person between them and Kelley quickly closes out of the app and allows the old woman between them to take her spot in line so that she can fall in with Christen instead. 

“She was supposed to be the future, too, Chris. You know what I mean.” She follows Christen’s gaze across the lobby, where Tobin’s herding her group of interns along. Christen’s grinning fondly and she shrugs.

“Yeah, but I didn’t screw things up with Tobin and me.” 

“This overprotective thing? It’s cute, but I’ve known you longer.” 

“Oh, are we supposed to be taking sides? If we are, I pick Lindsey’s.” Kelley’s mouth twitches. Christen’s eyes narrow. “What’re you doing with your face? Kel.”

“Nothing. Here, let me get your coffee.” She orders her macchiato, Christen’s latte, and a large, black coffee. 

She hands Christen her cup just as her pager goes off. “Kelley, please don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“That really limits my options. How about I don’t do anything _ Tobin _ wouldn’t do?” Christen can _ see _ Kelley sidle up to Emily at the back of the coffee line and she thinks about paging Emily to get her out of whatever Kelley’s got planned. But her pager rings again and she has to go. 

Emily can take care of herself.

Kelley holds the coffee out to Emily. Emily stares at her hand. She’s still wearing the ring, and that’s what Emily can’t look away from. “What’s this?” 

“It’s coffee,” Kelley replies. Their fingers brush while Kelley hands the coffee off and heads to the elevator. “Just coffee.”

Emily takes a sip. It_ feels _like more than coffee.

-

Lindsey hovers uncertainly after stepping out of the elevator and onto the third floor. This is Emily’s space and it feels like she’s encroaching, especially because they haven’t talked about it. She wishes her pager would ring. If there’s a big trauma or something, Tobin will need all hands on deck, and she’ll be able to escape. 

The pager on her hip is stubbornly silent and Lindsey glares at it before taking a cautious step forward, then realizes she has no idea where to even find Dr. O’Hara. She looks down the corridor and considers paging her...or not.

Hayley pops out of one of the patient rooms, gives Lindsey a glance, and bursts out laughing. “She’s just down at the nurses’ station. Why do you look like you’re going to throw up?”

Privately, Lindsey thinks she _ might _ throw up, but she keeps that to herself as she trails Hayley down the hallway. “Do you know what case she’s got?”

“No idea. I didn’t even know we had anything surgical.” There’s something in Hayley’s tone that makes Lindsey think maybe she knows more than she lets on, and Lindsey realizes that the peds interns probably hang out, too, just like the surgical ones do. 

She wonders what Emily’s told them about her, about _ them _ , but she also really, really doesn’t want to know, so she stays quiet. When she approaches the counter, Kelley’s already there, and Hayley gives her an almost pitying glance and a _ good luck _ before heading towards the nursery.

Kelley stands up as soon as she notices her and Lindsey spends three seconds trying to decide whether or not they’re going to pretend not to know each other in front of a few other interns in pink scrubs. 

“Dr. Horan,” Kelley answers that question for her and holds her hand out for Lindsey to shake. That feels like some kind of truce and Lindsey’s not really sure she wants to do that, but she extends her hand anyway and gives it a firm shake. 

“Dr. O’Hara.” 

“Will you go talk to the patient in 314?” Lindsey nods and starts to round the desk to start chart reviewing. Kelley stops her with a look. “Talk to the patient, Dr. Horan. The chart will be here once you figure it out.”

It’s weird. It’s the complete _ opposite _ of what she does every day. Her mornings go like this: shower, coffee, chart review, rounds. Lindsey’s not really sure what to do without her routine and she feels a little bit like she might be breaking out in hives, but she nods again and turns her back on Kelley, walks down the hallway and into the patient’s room. 

She finds a perfectly normal looking eleven-year-old playing Mario Kart.

With Emily. 

Lindsey hesitates in the doorway, throws a look over her shoulder, and sees Kelley is watching her. Then, she marches right inside. “Hey,” she says, looking at the patient and not at Emily, even though Emily startles and her car falls right off of Rainbow Road. Lindsey tries not to laugh. “I’m Dr. Horan.” 

“I don’t like doctors,” the kid announces. 

“What about her?”

“Sonny’s not really a doctor.”

“Hey! I resent that.” Lindsey does laugh at that. A little bit. But she ignores Emily in favor of looking at the girl in front of her instead. The faster she does what Kelley’s asking of her, the faster she can leave and find something to cut in to. 

“So, what’s up?” It’s Emily’s turn to laugh. Lindsey’s bedside manner isn’t the best and she knows it sounds forced, but she hasn’t taken a real history since medical school. Surgeons are more concerned with what procedure they’re doing and not the patient’s name, which Lindsey realizes she hasn’t asked for when Emily points it out.

“This is Taylor. Tay, this is Lindsey. Forgive her. Surgeons aren’t really doctors, either.” Emily hands over her Switch controller and gives Lindsey’s side a little nudge as she passes.

Lindsey takes her vacated seat. “So, Taylor, what brings you in today?”

“My parents.” 

This is going to be harder than she thought. Lindsey turns her chair towards Taylor’s bed and leans forward. “Okay, why?”

The kid lifts up her pant leg, showing off a nasty bruise. Now that Lindsey looks at her, she notices a smattering of purples and yellows on her arms and legs and- 

“Did your parents do this?” Lindsey can’t help reaching for Taylor’s arm, where there’s a long, deep, jagged cut...sewn shut with staples. Taylor yanks her arm back, cradles it to her chest, and shakes her head forcefully.

“No. I did that.”

“You stapled your own arm shut?” Alarm bells are going off in Lindsey’s head. She’s got to call Child and Youth. She figures maybe that’s where Emily rushed off to. 

“Yeah,” Taylor says slowly, like Lindsey’s an idiot. “Because I didn’t want to come back to the hospital.” 

“Back?”

“I’ve been here, like, six times in the last six months.” The alarms are ringing louder. 

“Why?”

Taylor ignores her and looks back at the game on screen. Lindsey sighs. “Okay, well, that’s gonna get infected, so I’m gonna go grab some medicine to numb you up and take those out. You might still need stitches, though.”

Before Lindsey even stands up, Taylor is plucking the staples out of her own skin. “Whoa, hey, stop that!” She doesn’t. She can’t get the last one out with her fingers, so Taylor uses her teeth and spits the staple onto the floor. Lindsey stares at her.

“Doesn’t that hurt?”

Taylor simply shakes her head. Her voice is a whisper. “I don’t _ get _ hurt. I have superpowers.” 

-

“This kid’s nuts, right?” Lindsey asks Emily as she passes her in the hall. Kelley is still sitting at the nurses’ station and Lindsey walks right up behind her chair. Kelley doesn’t stop talking with the nurses, and she has them all laughing about something she and Emily did in Las Vegas by the time she notices Lindsey standing there. 

“What do you think, Dr. Horan?”

“I think she’s lying.”

“Are you always so cynical?” Kelley wonders, pulling up Taylor’s chart and letting Lindsey read over her shoulder. She’s been in the ER six times in the last six months for anything from cuts requiring stitches to a broken arm. The X-rays they scroll through show multiple healing fractures of the ribcage. Lindsey exhales softly. 

“What are you thinking?”

“This kid’s being hurt by somebody. Did you guys call CYS?”

“They’ve already done an investigation. Twice. Nothing came of it.” Kelley turns in her seat to look at her, and Lindsey runs her hand through her hair out of frustration. 

“I don’t believe her.”

“Don’t believe what?”

“She said she can’t feel pain. That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Well, maybe you should test that theory.”

“How?”

“Have you ever heard of a cold pressure test?”

-

In her haste to get off of the peds floor, Lindsey plows right into someone. The person hits the floor and Lindsey apologizes automatically, offers a hand up to the person she knocked over. 

Emily blinks up at her from the ground. She pauses for half a second and then takes Lindsey’s hand. “It’s cool.”

“Are we cool?” 

“I’m cool. I don’t know if you’re cool.” Emily offers her a crooked grin and a shrug. She’s still holding Lindsey’s hand and Lindsey hasn’t pulled it away. 

“I’m not sure if I’m cool, yet. We’re still on for tonight, right?”

“Yeah, six o'clock. All yours.”

“Sonnett! Rounds.” It’s Kelley. Emily’s expression falters and she worries her lower lip again. Lindsey gives her hand a squeeze before dropping it and sidestepping her. 

“I’ll see you soon, Em.”

“Yeah. See you.” 

-

“What can I cut?” Lindsey says as soon as she finds Tobin in the ER. “Your friend has me on a non-surgical case. You owe me.”

“Oh, I _ owe you _ ?” Tobin doesn’t look up from the stitches she’s placing. “My mistake. I thought _ I _ was your senior resident and _ you _were on consults.”

Lindsey opens her mouth to...explain or retaliate or _ something _, but Tobin doesn’t let her. “If Kelley consulted surgery, there’s a reason. Do your homework, Horan. And get out of my ER.” 

Feeling a little bit like a scolded child, Lindsey retreats to the tunnels in the basement with Taylor’s chart. Rose is already scrubbed in on her cardiology procedure and Mal is post-call, so she only finds Russell there, knee-deep in an Orthopedic textbook. 

She throws herself onto a spare gurney and starts reviewing the imaging again. “Got anything good?” She asks, because the silence is thick and suffocating. Russell snaps his textbook closed and sits up.

“Just gonna replace some guy’s femur with a metal rod because it’s crushed. What about you?”

“I don’t know,” Lindsey admits, leafing through the paperwork and looking at the X-rays again. She holds it up so Russell can see and he snorts.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have slept with her wife, huh?”

“It’s not surgical, but Tobin wouldn’t waste me.”

“Oh, of course not, because you’re Lindsey Horan.” Russell rolls his eyes and tears into a bag of chips. 

“No, I just mean, she thinks our education’s important. So if Kelley-”

“_ Kelley _?” 

She ignores him. “-if Kelley consulted us, there must be something else going on. I’m supposed to be doing a cold pressure test.” Lindsey gets back up and heads for the elevators. The sooner she proves that the kid’s lying, the sooner she can cut.

“It kind of sounds like your girlfriend’s wife is using war tactics on you.” 

“Not my girlfriend!” She calls back. At least, she doesn’t think so.

-

“This is stupid.” Lindsey can’t really argue with her. She’s sitting opposite Taylor on her bed, a large tub of ice water on the traytable between them. “I’m not doing it.”

“What if I do it, too?” Lindsey says, wiggling her eyebrows and feeling dumber by the minute. Taylor just looks at her. “Yeah, look, I bet I can keep my hand in here longer than you. But if you’re trying not to lose…”

Taylor plunges her hand into the ice water. Lindsey mirrors her, but uses her left hand. She needs her dominant hand for stuff. Like performing surgery. It’s freezing. Lindsey feels it deep into her bones and it sends a shudder up her spine. Then, her hand starts to go numb from it. Taylor’s eyes don’t leave Lindsey’s. She looks almost bored. Meanwhile, Lindsey starts feeling pins and needles in her fingertips that slowly shifts into a throbbing pain that sets her nerve endings on fire. She wrenches her hand from the bucket and wraps it in a warm towel. Then, she yanks Taylor’s hand out of the water, too.

“You don’t feel that?” 

“Nope.” Taylor pops the _ P _ and shrugs, examining her pruney fingers and accepting the towel Lindsey hands her. “That was nothing. Yesterday at school, I let this kid hit me in the stomach twenty times.” Lindsey pales at that. “The last time, he used a baseball bat.”

“Okay. Um, we’re gonna need to take some pictures…” 

“A CT?” Taylor asks, her face paling to match Lindsey’s. “I can’t do that. I get claustro...claus...I don’t like small spaces.” She climbs out of bed and Lindsey’s mind is racing a mile a minute. If the kid really doesn’t feel pain, there’s no telling what kind of damage she’s done to herself. Her heart is lodged somewhere in her ears and she stretches to jab the code button on the wall.

Emily arrives in twenty seconds. The rest of the code team is on her heels. She glances from Taylor, shrugging on her jacket, to Lindsey, with her hand wrapped in a towel, and back again before shooing the rest of the people out of the room.

“What the _ heck _ are you guys doing?”

“She doesn’t feel pain,” Lindsey says, meeting Emily’s gaze and holding it. “And she dared a kid to hit her in the stomach twenty times. We need imaging.”

“I can’t go back in there again. Last time, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I won’t do it.”

“You can take twenty punches-”

“-and a baseball bat.”

Emily doesn’t miss a beat. “-and a baseball bat, but you can’t hang out in a spaceship for twenty minutes? Come on, Tay. That’s weak.” Taylor squirms and zips her hoodie. “I’ll hang out in the control room and tell you a story, okay? But we really need to see what’s going on in there.” 

Reluctantly, Taylor agrees to the test, but Lindsey orders something to calm her down, too. She’s still awake on the way down and Emily and Lindsey trail the stretcher. “You got this, Tay. See you on the other side.” She fist bumps her on the way out.

Lindsey’s standing behind the radiology tech and Emily takes the seat beside him. She pushes the button that will allow her to talk to Taylor in the CT scanner. “Okay, so, I start the story and then you say a sentence and then Lindsey says a sentence and we’ll rotate like that. Deal?”

“I didn’t agree to do that.”

“Deal.” Lindsey purses her lips. She can’t really say no when Taylor’s voice is shaking like that. 

“Once upon a time, there was a girl with superpowers.”

“Who went to space in a rocket ship and landed on the moon.”

“Where she met aliens who only ate cheese…”

By the time the scan is over, they’ve decided that the aliens are actually the superhero’s family and that she’s going to bring them back to earth. 

They’ve also discovered a mess of internal bleeding in Taylor’s stomach.

-

“I don’t really know what’s wrong with her,” Lindsey says, falling into the seat beside Kelley. “But she needs surgery.”

“I wouldn’t have consulted you if I didn’t think so.” Lindsey feels a little bit guilty. Tobin was right. Tobin’s _ always _ right. “It’s called congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis.” 

Lindsey wracks her brain for some recognition, but she comes up empty. Kelley continues. “It’s autosomal recessive and usually diagnosed in babies or toddlers when they end up with lots of broken bones or other injuries. Why do you think Taylor’s case was missed?”

“She’s adopted, right?”

“Exactly. And that’s recent. She’s been in foster care since she was little. Things get missed.” Kelley shakes her head and Lindsey looks at her, really _ looks _ at her, for the first time. Objectively, Kelley is really pretty. She also looks really tired. There are dark circles under her eyes and her shoulders are a little bit slumped, but there’s this spark in her eyes that’s a little startling when Kelley’s eyes meet Lindsey’s. 

“You’re gonna take care of her, right?” For a second, Lindsey doesn’t know whether Kelley’s talking about Emily or Taylor. Then she says “I heard you’re the best. I _ know _ Tobin’s the best. I want you two in there.”

“Of course.” Of course Kelley didn’t move to Portland only to walk away. But Lindsey can’t help wishing she might.

-

Emily doesn’t like the OR, but she can’t help the need to be there for her patients. She’s sitting next to Christen and trying not to look at Lindsey and what Lindsey’s hands are doing, but at least when she does that, she’s not obsessing over the monitor keeping track of Taylor’s vital signs or thinking about how she’s claustrophobic and has a tube down her throat. 

Suddenly, it feels like _ Emily _ can’t breathe, and no amount of staring at Lindsey’s (really talented) hands is going to make that any easier. She remembers the last time this happened, how Lindsey was sitting on her other side, how she’d explained the procedure to her and kept her grounded. 

Christen notices, because of course she does, and rests a hand on Emily;s upper back, rubbing circles into her. Emily knows she’s trying to be comforting but it has the opposite effect. Emily rocks upright and bolts from the gallery, trying to keep her lunch down as she wrenches the door open. 

She slams right into someone for the second time today and lands right on her ass. Emily’s already scrambling back to her feet. She’s going to the stairwell, where no one can see her. She’s going to hide out there until it’s over and Christen comes looking for her. 

Because as much as Christen cares, she also doesn’t know how to deal with Emily when she’s having one of these.

Kelley does, though.

Kelley knows _ Emily _. When she slips into the stairwell, Kelley doesn’t say anything to her at all. She doesn’t touch her, either, just slides down the wall to sit beside her, getting her long, white coat filthy, and looks straight ahead. There’s not much in here, other than a poster reminding the staff to get their flu shots.

“It’s rectangular. It’s blue and white.” Emily looks up from her shoelaces and focuses on the poster instead. Kelley’s still talking. “There are two people on it. The font looks like Times New Roman. Or maybe Georgia. The text is black. There’s-” Emily takes one of Kelley’s hands in hers and absentmindedly twists the wedding band on her ring finger, an old habit. “-a cartoon vaccine on it.” 

Emily’s breathing has steadied and she doesn’t feel like there’s an elephant on her chest anymore. Kelley’s still talking about the flu poster. 

“Kel.”

She shuts up and finally looks at her for the first time since she walked into the stairwell. “Hm?”

“Thanks. I, um, needed that.” Needed _ Kelley _. Emily’s trying not to think too hard about it. She rests her head on Kelley’s shoulder. She’ll have time to worry about what this means later. 

When Christen pokes her head inside, they don’t move. Kelley’s grinning softly. Emily’s kind of hiding her face in Kelley’s shoulder. “They’re done. She’s okay.” 

Maybe they’ll all be okay. 

Eventually. 

-

Lindsey goes to check on Taylor a couple of hours later and finds her bed empty. 

For a second or two, she’s panicked, halfway to calling a Code Purple, but then she sees the note on the bedside table. 

_ Learning to fly. -T & E _

The handwriting is strangely familiar. Lindsey’s seen it before on Post-Its slapped to her bathroom mirror. It kind of makes her heart twist in her chest. 

Working at Providence Hospital even for a few months means Lindsey knows all of the secret spots: the tunnels in the basement that the surgery interns have taken over, the peds call rooms that are way bigger and more comfortable than any in the rest of the hospital, the north stairwell that leads to the roof.

She reaches the top and swipes her badge, thinking that it’s really unsafe that any physician can get up here. She cracks the door open, sees Emily and Taylor’s backs as they sit on the edge of the roof.

They might as well be at the end of the world while Lindsey’s stuck on earth. 

She leaves them to it.

-

Lindsey wonders if she should order another drink. She’s tucked away in a corner booth at the bar, an empty glass beside her, and her phone volume on high. Emily hasn’t texted her, though. She hasn’t seen her in hours and she’s starting to feel like she’s a teenager getting stood up.

Mal and Rose are at the bar with Russell and Lindsey is considering whether or not she should get up and join them when the door swings open. Automatically, Lindsey’s gaze flicks towards it and she’s met with Emily, looking effortlessly good in a soft sweater and jeans, her hair down and falling near her shoulders. 

Their eyes meet across the bar and Lindsey finds herself smiling without thinking about it. Emily grins back at her, all crinkled eyes and dimples, but it flickers and dies as soon as it appeared. Kelley walks in right behind her and Lindsey’s eyes dart to their joined hands. 

She stands up, leaves a couple of bills on the table, and crosses the room to wedge herself between Rose and Russell, who hands her a shot of tequila that she throws back effortlessly. 

“The Great Horan graces us with her presence! What did we do to deserve this?”

Lindsey ignores Rose in favor of reaching for Mal’s shot, which she takes, too, and then orders another drink. 

-

Emily sits next to Kelley and across from Christen and Tobin, her right hand in Kelley’s left, fingers spinning her wife’s wedding ring.

She keeps watching Lindsey and her friends and wonders if Lindsey’s imagining her face while she throws darts effortlessly into the bullseye. 

“So, you’re really doing this?” Tobin sounds surprised. Emily is, too. She didn’t think she’d be able to even consider being with Kelley again. It doesn’t mean she forgives her for it. It just means she loves her.

Still.

She’s still watching Lindsey and she thinks she could love her, too, and knows, without having to ask, that _ Lindsey _ would take care of her. 

But Kelley takes care of her in a different way. She thinks about Kelley and the stairwell and how she would be embarrassed for Lindsey to see her like that. 

She thinks about Lindsey holding her against her chest and pressing kisses to the back of her neck in the middle of the night.

Emily has a headache. She can’t decide if it’s the drinks or everything else. She orders another drink, just to be sure. 

“We’re gonna try,” Kelley says, draping an arm around Emily’s shoulders and smacking a kiss to her cheek. Across the room, Lindsey lands another bullseye. 

“You better try your best,” Christen says.

“Oh, I’m never giving her less than 100% again.”

Emily takes another drink.

-

Two hours later, Lindsey’s sitting on the front porch swing, wrapped in a blanket and holding a warm cup of tea. Mal’s already in bed and Rose is passed out on their couch. Lindsey is wide awake. She can’t stop thinking about Emily, even though she knows, logically, that she should let her go. 

The text from earlier is still on the front of her phone.

_ I think I’m gonna stay at Kelley’s for a while. I’m sorry. _

In the short time that she’s known Emily, Lindsey’s never received a text with such proper punctuation from Emily. It’s serious enough that she believes her. Her thumb hovers over the _ delete contact _ button. That wouldn’t change anything, not really, but it’s the principle of the thing.

Then, Emily shows up on the steps. She’s bundled up in a Stanford hoodie and it feels like a punch to the face when she thinks about the Yale sweater from this morning. Emily has the decency to look sheepish. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Lindsey looks at her and forgets all about deleting Emily’s number. With Emily standing on her porch, hands clasped in front of her, hair tied up in a loose bun, she forgets about almost everything else. 

“I, um, I came to get my stuff.” Emily sounds apologetic. And a little bit drunk, actually. That’s probably what spurs Lindsey into action. She stands up, places herself between Emily and the front door, and reaches for Emily’s hands to stop her from wringing them. “Hey.”

She doesn’t let them go, holds one of Emily’s hands in either of hers, and dips her head enough to make Emily look at her. “So, I think I’m falling in love with you.” 

It’s Lindsey’s turn to look apologetic. She gives Emily a tentative little smile that keeps her from interrupting. “I love the way you know how I take my coffee and that you’re always stealing my clothes. I love that you can’t keep yourself from dancing even without music. And I want you to pick me. I want you to love me. And I know. I know she’s probably really great, but there’s a reason you were here and she wasn’t and...I don’t know. I just want you to pick me.” 

Emily stares at her. She looks at Lindsey’s mouth and Lindsey tips her head a little bit and if Emily did the same, they’d be kissing. 

But then, Kelley opens the car door and calls for her and Emily seems to snap back to reality. She squeezes Lindsey’s hands and bites her lip takes a step back. “Linds,” she murmurs, and the way she says her name sounds like a prayer. “I gotta go.” 

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, you said that.” Lindsey lets go of her and Emily bites her lip and Lindsey is trying really hard not to think about how those lips taste. “I’m gonna go to bed. Lock up when you go?”

“Sure.” They walk inside together and it’s almost normal, but when Lindsey gets in bed, it feels too big and too cold.

-

Kelley’s place doesn’t look lived in.

The appliances are all stainless steel and the furniture is sleek and black. It looks nothing like the two-bedroom they’d lived in in Virginia, and when she sinks onto the leather sofa, she finds herself missing the lumpy, carpet covered one they’d shared. 

It doesn’t really feel like Kelley, and if this is who Kelley is, now, she’s not really sure if she belongs here, either. 

Kelley’s hovering near the kitchen island, twisting the hem of her shirt in her fingers. “It’s not much and it was furnished already, but it’s something.”

Emily nods. If she looks close enough, she can find touches of Kelley. There’s a Stanford flag on one wall and a framed jersey on the opposite one. The DVD collection is mostly the same, with a few additions. The bedspread is new, but the t-shirt collage blanket at the foot of the bed isn’t. 

Emily traces the framed photograph on the bedside table with her finger. It’s one of her favorites. In it, Emily’s mid-laugh, smiling at the camera. Kelley’s smiling, too, but she’s just looking at Emily. 

Kelley walks up beside her and loops an arm around her waist, presses a kiss to her shoulder. “We’re gonna be okay.”

In the living room, Kelley’s phone rings for the third time. It’s silenced, so they don’t hear it, but that doesn’t stop the notification from popping up once it goes to voicemail.

_ 3 missed calls from Alex. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How'd we do, folks?
> 
> Come bother me on twitter @cornerkix_ if you want.


	6. tequila

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She can feel the unsaid words hanging between them. 
> 
> "You could have just picked me."
> 
> "I know."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as usual, unbeta'd, all mistakes are mine, and all ideas are a mix of my own and shonda rhimes'. 
> 
> chapter title is from dan + shay. there is a very special cameo in this one.
> 
> um there are like some vague hints towards sex in this chapter so scroll with caution, though there's nothing explicit here. 
> 
> have fun?

Lindsey stares up at the ceiling and wonders if she stopped liking sex with guys altogether or if it’s just the panting guy beside her that sucks at it.

She’s a little bit drunk and a lot sad and that’s probably why she’s in Russell’s bed right now. She refuses to take people back to her place. It’s one of her rules. Since things ended with Emily, she’s been spending most of her nights at Joe’s, at least when she’s not working, and many of her nights end up like this. 

“That was awesome,” Russell says from her left. Lindsey thinks _ for you _ while she swings her legs over the side of the bed and shrugs back into her clothes. She’s already halfway to the door before Russell realizes what’s happening.

“You’re leaving already?”

“Have to be at the hospital in,” she checks her watch. “Six hours. So, yeah.” 

He just rolls over and Lindsey slips out of the room and tries not to think about Emily.

-

They haven’t had sex since Kelley got to Portland. 

It’s mostly Emily’s decision. It’s just that they’d been through a lot, and the thought of being intimate with Kelley again makes it hard to breathe. 

It’s partly because Emily keeps thinking about Lindsey, which is stupid and unfair to both of them. She’s with Kelley, her wife, and it’s not fair to Kelley to keep thinking about her not-girlfriend. (It’s not really fair to Lindsey, either).

And Kelley’s been really good about it. She’s always been careful with Emily, always asked before trying anything new. Now, she keeps asking before even kissing her, which is thoughtful and nice but also, right now, a little bit frustrating.

“Kel,” she breathes out against her neck. “Just kiss me.”

And she does, and it’s easy, really, to fall back into Kelley. She’s a good kisser and she knows Emily inside and out, knows how she likes a little bit of a tug to her hair or just the right way to suck on her bottom lip to get a little noise out of her. 

They get caught up in it, in the familiarity of it all and the easy way their bodies fit together, and before Emily knows it, they’re doing this. 

“Are you-”

“Yes, I’m sure. I’m 100% sure. I am totally sure.” And Kelley smiles fondly and Emily’s heart does that stutter thing in her chest and she thinks that, maybe, they’ll be okay after all.

-

She doesn’t get off the first time they try. 

Or the second.

Kelley’s good about it, even if Emily knows her ego’s bruised. She just tucks herself in close and whispers that they’ll figure it out and Emily wants so badly to believe that, but she can’t stop thinking about how Lindsey could get her off with nothing but her mouth.

And then she feels bad for thinking about that, twists in Kelley’s arms, and forces herself to go to sleep.

-

When the elevator stops at the lobby, she comes face to face with Emily. She and Kelley got on at the basement level, because Kelley gets to park in the physicians’ garage instead of the surface lot down the block all of the residents are exiled to.

Lindsey seriously considers turning around and taking the stairs, but she only got four hours of sleep last night and she’s also a little bit too proud for that. So she steps inside and turns her back to them and does not look at how they’re holding hands in the back of the elevator. 

The elevator dings at three and the pair make their way out while Lindsey shuffles sideways to make room. Emily brushes against her as she goes and Lindsey kind of feels like she’s on fire.

Beside her, Rose scoffs. “Get a room.” 

“Shut up.”

-

Rose and Lindsey arrive at the hospital at the same time. They’re shoulder-to-shoulder all the way up to the lounge and reach the surgical floor at the same time. They both reach for the same thick, brightly colored chart with a new attending’s name on it. 

“I had awful sex last night and was just dumped. I deserve something cool to take my mind off of it,” Lindsey says, dropping her voice. 

Rose laughs. “Oh, you’re not getting a pity surgery from me, Horan.” 

Lindsey sighs and yanks the chart right out of Rose’s hands. She holds it out of Rose’s reach just as Tobin steps behind the nurses’ station. 

Tobin is _ never _ here this early. Had she been on call? Lindsey doesn’t think so.

“You guys should stop fighting over it. It’s mine, and we’ll need both of you. Read up on the patient and decide which one of you will get the organs.” 

As soon as Tobin says it, they both realize they’re going to be in on a transplant surgery, and they start arguing about who will take the chopper to collect whatever organs they need and who will stay with the patient and prep them for surgery.

Tobin lets them fight for two minutes before stepping between them. “Lavelle, you’ll come with me to get the heart and lungs. Horan, Mrs. Beckett is in 4210. Both of you read up on her case and be ready for the surgery.” 

Rose grins and blows her as kiss as she skips down the hallway.

Lindsey flips the chart open and props it on the counter. She doesn’t say anything, but Tobin knows something’s up anyway, because Tobin always knows. 

“Hey.” When Lindsey doesn’t respond, Tobin gives her a little nudge with her foot. “You’re both going to be in the OR. You’re better with patients. That’s all it is.” 

“Well, she’ll never learn if-”

Tobin grins. “You think we can teach bedside manner?” 

Lindsey’s mouth twitch slightly. She shrugs. “Okay? It’s gonna be a really cool surgery. You’ll love it. I’ve only seen one so far.”

“Okay.” 

-

Usually, Lindsey’s alarm clock wakes Mal up, too. 

Over the last couple of weeks, Mal has been late for work at least four times because Lindsey hasn’t been coming home. By the time she reaches the surgical floor, Rose and Lindsey have been assigned to the coolest case and even Russell beat her to the hospital, so he’s got the appendectomy. 

That leaves Mal with Dansby Swanson, who looks way too young and healthy to match the chart she’d read up on earlier that morning.

He’s also kind of cute.

He’s lounging in the armchair of his hospital room instead of in bed, still dressed in sweats and a t-shirt and watching a baseball game on television when Mal walks in.

“Hi, I’m Dr. Pugh. I’ll be taking care of you today, and if you get your heart, I’ll also be in the OR when that happens.” 

“_ If _?” He asks, flashing her a grin. “The only reason I’m here, Dr. Pugh, is because Dr. Heath told me I’d get a heart today. Was she lying to me?” He leans forward a little bit in his chair, gets distracted by something happening on the TV. 

Mal steps further into the room, blinks at the screen, and takes her stethoscope off of her neck to listen to her patient’s heart and lungs. “That was awesome. Did you see that?”

“No talking,” she warns him, a smile breaking into her voice. Once she’s done, she steps away from him and gives him an apologetic grin. “Honestly, I don’t really know anything about baseball.”

He looks at her like she’s kicked his puppy. “I used to play. Shortstop.” When Mal doesn’t reply, he points to the corresponding player on the screen. “Most important player on the field.”

“Isn’t that the pitcher?”

“Thought you didn’t know baseball,” Dansby says.

Mal just shrugs. “Do you have any questions about what’s going on with you?” She sees Dansby open his mouth and holds up a hand. “Medically.”

“No.” Dansby settles back in his chair and turns his eyes back to the television. “Do _ you _ have questions about me? Medically?”

Mal tries not to laugh. “I mean...well, can I just run things by you? Before my boss shows up and grills me?”

Dansby pulls the chair beside him out and Mal settles into it. He keeps watching the game while she talks. “So, you got a viral infection in your heart and that caused your heart to stop pumping well. It’s been managed medically but you ultimately need a heart transplant.”

“That’s the Cliffs Notes version, yep.” Dansby smirks at her as someone hits a homerun. “Did you want to hear the whole thing?”

-

Gemma Beckett is only twenty-two. 

She’s never smoked a cigarette in her life. But genetics left her with a deficiency in an enzyme that left her with lungs that won’t inflate. It means she’s twenty-two and has the lungs of an eighty-year-old who smoked two packs a day since she was sixteen. 

She looks like hell. 

“Hi, I’m Dr. Horan. I’ll be in your surgery later. Did you have any questions?” 

Gemma looks up from her phone for about two seconds before continuing to scroll. “You look sixteen. Are you like Doogie Howser or what?”

Forcing a smile, Lindsey enters the room to examine the patient. Gemma absolutely will not cooperate when Lindsey asks her to take a couple of deep breaths. Her lungs still sound awful without the deep breaths, though. 

“Do you have any questions about the procedure?”

“The procedure where you’ll take out my broken lungs and put new, working ones in there? No.”

Lindsey blinks at her. “Okay. Well, if you do think of any questions, I’m around all day.”

“You might want to find something better to do.” 

-

Lindsey avoids the basement, because she doesn’t want to have to talk to Russell, but the coffee shop has Emily. Emily, who notices her in the back of the line and doubles back to hand her a vanilla latte. 

Now, she doesn’t even have the line to waste time in, so she goes to the library and reads about alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency and tries not to be jealous that Rose and Tobin are in a helicopter right now.

She also doesn’t drink that latte.

-

“How does this work?” Rose asks, once they’re in the air. 

Tobin has headphones in and ignores her. Rose reaches across the aisle to tap her knee lightly. 

“What?”

“How does this work?” 

“We go there, you stand there until they get to the heart and lungs, then you put them in the cooler.” The cooler is sitting on the seat next to Rose. “And then you don’t let the cooler out of your hands, at all, until we get back there to save two lives.”

“It’s that simple?”

“Not really, but that’s the gist of it.” 

-

Harvest surgeries are full of vultures. There are at least eight other surgeons lined up along the back wall of the OR with coolers full of ice to preserve their organs for the flights back to their recipients. 

Rose kind of wants in on the cutting part of this surgery. Tobin is nowhere to be found while she waits.

And waits.

The patient giving the organs in braindead, so all of the other organs have to be removed before the heart, to give it the least lag time between patients as possible, so she’ll be waiting here, freezing her ass off without a jacket, for a while. 

The kidney transplant doctor gets to leave first. Then the liver guy. Then the GI guy. 

Finally, after what seems like hours, they get to the lungs, which are put on ice, and Tobin waltzes in just in time to go examine the heart before it’s removed from the donor. “How’d you time that so perfectly?”

“You do enough of these and you figure it out,” Tobin says, grinning behind her surgical mask and stepping up to the table, careful to keep the sterile field. 

She frowns as she looks at the heart inside of the guy’s chest. He’s older than the patient they’re supposed to be collecting the heart for, and it’s too large and diseased to be worth it. She shakes her head and says something to the surgeon performing the operation, who sets to closing up.

“What’s wrong? No heart transplant?”

“That one might buy the guy a year. He’s young. We can do better.” 

She points to the cooler, which now holds a freshly removed set of healthy lungs. “Got the lungs, though! Let’s go.”

-

Mal has to tell Dansby that there will be no surgery today. 

When she returns to his room, there’s another baseball game on. She only knows it’s a different one than the one he was watching earlier in the day because of the uniforms. 

“Back for more, Dr. Pugh?”

Mal shakes her head. “Dansby, I hate to be the one to tell you, but-”

“No transplant today, huh?” He’s already shrugging into a jacket and gathering up the rest of his things.

Mal tilts her head slightly. He’s taking this better than she’d thought he would. 

Dansby just smiles. “This is the third time they’ve called me in on a “maybe”. Dr. Heath wants to make sure I get the best heart I can, since I’m still healthy as a horse, except for the broken heart.” He waits a moment before adding, “Maybe somebody could fix this one in the meantime?”

He’s flirting, Mal thinks, which is kind of inappropriate, but since she’s got his discharge paperwork in her hands...well, she thinks about it, for a second, before handing it over to him. Their hands brush and he smiles wider and she feels herself blushing, just a tiny bit. 

“Well, good luck with that, Dansby Swanson.”

“Hopefully, when I get my new heart, you’re around to help.”

“Hopefully.” 

And then, with a little mock salute, he’s gone.

-

Rose and Lindsey both get to scrub in for the lung transplant.

Lindsey gets first assist, which Rose is pissed about, but she still gets to be in there and watch while Tobin cuts out the old, diseased lungs and replaces them with fresh, pink tissue. Lindsey has the small, gray lungs in her hands and when she looks at the new set of lungs in the chest cavity, she feels a little bit dizzy at how _ simple _ surgery is.

You just cut the bad parts out and replace them with new, fresh parts. 

If only life could be so simple. 

Lindsey suctions and cuts the sutures Tobin places and Rose gets to close her up with the stapler, so it ends up being a good day for both of them. 

They’re a little delirious and laughing by the time they reach the locker room, and Russ and Mal’s stuff is already gone. 

“You wanna grab a drink?” Lindsey asks, hoping she doesn’t appear obvious. She’s been drinking more lately, but she likes to think it’s a side effect of the job and not stuff going on in her personal life.

Rose levels her with a stare and Lindsey is pretty sure Rose knows she’s more fucked up about Emily than high off of the surgery. As soon as she steps out of the OR, the adrenaline crash is much steeper than it used to be. Maybe it’s because she doesn’t have anyone outside of the surgery group, who _ know _ her cases, to talk to about them.

Or maybe she just misses Emily.

Either way, Rose does take pity on her, here, outside of the OR. “Sure, but you’re buying.”

“Deal.”

-

Lindsey wakes up with a crick in her neck and feeling too hot. At first, she thinks she must have left her electric blanket on too high. Then, the person next to her shifts and presses into Lindsey’s neck and her muddled thoughts swim into focus. 

“If I’m late because of you and get stuck in the pit again, I’m never sleeping with you again.”

“That’s not what you said last night.” Lindsey’s voice is thick with sleep, but she forces herself out of the arms around her and to her feet. She stretches, combs her fingers through her hair, and wanders towards the bathroom, only to have the door snap shut just before she reaches it. 

Blinking sleepily, Lindsey raises her hand to knock. “Sorry, babe,” Rose calls from the other side of the door. “Just because you gave me three orgasms last night doesn’t mean I’m letting you beat me to work today.” 

Lindsey groans, retreating to Rose’s kitchen for coffee instead. 

There are rules. The rules were very clear. 

  1. Don’t bring people to the house.
  2. Don’t sleep with coworkers.

She’s already failed step one. 

Twice. 

(Three times, if you count Emily. But her rules don't include Peds interns. So, twice.)

-

They try again.

Emily wants to help. She whispers what she wants into Kelley’s ear while she curls herself around her. She wants this to _ work _.

It’s not working, at first. She’s too tense, too in her head, and Kelley can tell. She presses it to the crown of Emily’s head in gentle kisses and brushes it into the back of her hand with the thumb of the hand not busy doing other things, but she doesn’t try to tell her to relax. They move together for a few minutes and Emily knows she’s not going to be able to come like this, despite Kelley doing the things that have always worked before. 

Emily presses her face into Kelley’s neck, closes her eyes, and turns her brain off. 

And that’s what works. She thinks about a different bed and different hands and blonde hair tickling her cheek and a laugh that she feels in her bones and she comes apart around Kelley for the first time since the last time.

She’s still shaking and trying to catch her breath when Kelley tips her chin up to kiss her softly. A laugh tumbles from Kelley’s lips to Emily’s. “We’re back.” 

Emily feels awful when she nods along with her. 

“Knew I still had it.”

-

The next morning, one of the nurses grabs Lindsey as soon as she hits the surgical floor. “Dr. Horan, your patient’s oxygenation is down to 80%. We need you.” 

She’s still in civilian clothes but follows Tyler anyway, stares blankly at the monitor over Gemma’s bed, which is reading her pulse at 120 and her oxygen saturation at 80%. She’s breathing too quickly, too. 

“Spiral CT. Stat.” Lindsey is at her bedside instantly and Gemma reaches out to grip her hand while Lindsey listens to her lungs. Clear as day. 

“Wh...what’s going...on?” It seems like finding the words is hard for her and Lindsey reaches around for the oxygen mask and places it on her face. If she’s right, it’ll do nothing for the problem, but Gemma will at least _ feel _ like she’s getting more air. 

“Did this happen suddenly or gradually overnight, Gemma? Just- nod for suddenly?”

Gemma nods. Lindsey nods back. “Okay, don’t worry. We’re gonna take care of you, okay? I have to go get you down to your test, but it’s gonna be fine, okay? I got you.” Gemma nods again and releases Lindsey’s hand.

“Get her down there right away, okay? If it’s a clot, we might need to go back in.”

-

The CT materializes on the computer screen agonizingly slowly. Rose is standing behind her and she says “Son of a bitch,” as the images load. There are bright spots all throughout the vessels filling the lungs, but a large, gray blob sits right in the middle of the pulmonary artery that supplies blood to the lungs. If it’s blocked, there’s no wonder Gemma can’t breathe; the lungs aren’t getting any oxygen.

“Ever done a thrombectomy?” Tobin asks them.

“I’ve seen one,” Rose says.

“I’d love to learn,” Lindsey cuts in.

Tobin looks between them. “Flip a coin. I’ll only need one today.” Then she gets up to prepare for the surgery.

Fishing a quarter out of her pocket, Lindsey prepares to flip it. “Heads or tails?” 

Rose doesn’t break eye contact when she says “Heads.” 

It’s heads. 

-

Lindsey gets stuck handling post-op and pre-op notes with Mal in the meantime. They split them down the middle and meet down in the basement once they’re done seeing the patients, charts open and snacks piled around them. 

“Hey,” Mal says, looking across at her. “I feel like I never see you anymore.”

Lindsey bites the inside of her cheek. She guesses she hasn’t been around for...several nights over the last couple of weeks. She’s been going out and going home with someone else. “Yeah. Sorry about that.” 

“Is everything okay?” 

Mal sounds so worried about her that Lindsey has to be honest with her. She puts her pen down, cradles her cheek in her hand, and sighs. “I’m trying to take my mind off of her and it’s not really working, but the only time I ever really forget about everything is when I’m in surgery.” 

“Have you talked to her?” 

Mostly, Lindsey’s been avoiding Emily. She doesn’t say that, though. She just shakes her head. 

“Don’t you think that maybe you should?”

“There’s nothing to talk about. Even if I said I missed her, it wouldn’t change anything.” Lindsey picks her pen back up and starts writing her notes. “I asked her to pick me and she didn’t. So I think we’re pretty clear.”

Mal has nothing to say to that. “You know, the guy who was supposed to get the heart was pretty cute, actually. If I met him in a bar or something, it could have been something.”

Lindsey’s mouth twitches. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Except, he’s a sports guy.”

“Hey, I was a sports girl.”

“I know. But you grew out of it. Proud of you.”

-

After work, they go to Joe’s, because surgeons are all about routines and this has become one of theirs. 

The senior residents and attendings come out here, too, which is a little bit like seeing a dog walk on its hind legs or a teacher outside of school, but if they stay in their own little bubble in the corner of the bar, over by the dart board, it’s easy enough to ignore. 

Lindsey’s on drink number two of the night and Rose keeps trying to get her to take tequila shots, even though those _ always _ leave her with a hangover, and Mal is still at the hospital, which is weird, because she’s not on call and her patient didn’t even go into surgery today. 

“That tastes like candy,” Rose complains, pointing at the martini Lindsey’s nursing with one hand. 

“If you hate it so much,” Russell says from Lindsey’s other side. “How would you know?” He’s got a beer in one hand, some dark lager that Lindsey absolutely hates. Rose just takes another shot. 

“Because,” she says, flipping the shot glass upside down and nodding at the bartender as he goes to get the liquor to pour her another. “I tasted it when she kissed me the other night.” She says it partly to make Lindsey blush and mostly to see Russell’s reaction. 

It takes him a second or two to figure it out, but when he does, his face flickers briefly to something like anger before melting into a surprised and almost amused expression. He takes a sip from his beer before speaking. “I thought you and I were…”

“Nope,” Lindsey says, popping the _ P _ and taking a large sip from her glass. She orders another when Joe swigs by to drop off Rose’s shot. 

Russell is still talking even though Lindsey’s mostly tuned him out. “If you’re into that, maybe a threesome would be fun.”

Rose nods. “Oh yeah, Linds, that _ would _ be fun.” She cranes around Lindsey and looks over Russell’s shoulder, where Mal has just wandered in from across the street. “What d’you say Mal?”

“Say no,” Lindsey advises her.

“Say yes,” Russell says at the same time. 

Mal blinks at her friends and offers a wary smile as she orders a drink. “What are we talking about?”

“Lindsey’s sex life,” Rose replies with a shrug of her shoulders. Mal nudges Russell until he moves from the stool next to Lindsey so that she can take it and rests her elbows on the top of the bar.

“Did you and Emily…?”

“No.” Lindsey sounds annoyed and wistful all at once, so Rose pushes a shot towards her. Mal frowns. 

“Lindsey and I, though,” Rose says, cracking up when Mal nearly spits out some of her drink. “Yeah, watch out, Dr. Pugh. She’s already got two of three.”

“No offense,” Mal says, stirring her glass absentmindedly. “But you’re not my type.” 

“Baby, she’s everyone’s type.” Rose’s entire goal is to make Lindsey incapable of keeping the blush off of her face tonight, and it’s working.

“I’m never sleeping with you again.”

“That’s not what you said last night.” 

-

Emily usually goes to Joe’s with Kelley, now. She used to hang around with the surgery interns, but she feels like she’s part of a divorce and Lindsey got custody of their kids. If she thinks too long about that, she’ll start thinking about being with Lindsey and having kids of their own, and that’s a path she really can’t risk going down right now.

So, she’s tucked away in a table near the back with Caitlin and Hayley, this time, listening to Cait complain about her girlfriend not understanding how much time residency takes up and trying not to point out that she has both a crumbling marriage and a not-quite-ex-girlfriend she’s still hung up on. 

Emily keeps looking at Lindsey’s back from across the room and Hayley keeps catching her do it. Every time, Hayley with raise her eyebrows in an unasked question and every time Emily just drops her glance to the table top instead. 

The fifth time she catches her, though, Hayley cuts Caitlin off mid-sentence to say “Okay, Sonny, what’s up? You never go out with us.”

“That’s not-”

“No, Hayley’s right. Ever since that wife of yours got back, you’ve been busy every night.” Caitlin waggles her eyebrows suggestively and Emily takes a huge gulp of her beer to keep from spilling right then and there. 

Hayley’s staring at her like she _ knows _, which doesn’t make sense, but Emily starts talking anyway. “So, up until earlier this week Kelley and I hadn’t, you know, done it at all. I was still so mad at her and we were just getting used to being together again.”

“Uh-huh.” 

“And then we _ did _ and I couldn’t- I didn’t…”

Caitlin snorts. Hayley kicks her under the table but doesn’t bother sparing her a look. She’s still watching Emily. “Was that a problem before?”

Emily shakes her head. 

It’s Caitlin’s turn to arch her eyebrows. She sighs and reaches across the table for one of Emily’s fries. “Maybe you picked wrong.”

Hayley kicks her again. Caitlin flips her off. 

“I, um, I did get off...later.” 

“Hey, well that’s a good sign,” Hayley says with a nod. 

Emily clears her throat. “But I was, uh, thinking about...Lindsey.” 

“Oh, buddy,” Caitlin mumbles, offering Emily a mozzarella stick. “That should probably tell you something.” 

For once, Hayley _ doesn’t _ kick her. She just pats Emily’s knee lightly. “I think, next time, maybe you should try _ not _ doing that.”

Caitlin agrees. “She’s right. Then you’ll know if you’ll be stuck in an orgasm-less marriage or not.” 

This time, _ Emily _ kicks her.

-

Kelley stand out on her balcony, alone, on her second glass of wine. She knows Emily deserves to spend time with her friends, away from her. Tobin and Christen deserve alone time, too. 

But Portland isn’t home like Virginia or even California were. She doesn’t _ have _ other friends to call or hang out with when she gets too far into her own head. 

There is one person she can always call, though. She does, but it goes right to voicemail. It doesn’t even ring, so she either has the phone off or-

She doesn’t finish that thought.

“Hey, Al. It’s me. I’ve just been missing you, lately, so I figured I’d give you a call. Give me a call back when you have the chance.” 

They used to end all of their calls with _ love you _, but that feels too intimate now. 

“Bye.”

-

They don’t need a dog. It’s kind of the last thing they need. They work too much and there are only two of them in the apartment, now. But she and Mal had started jogging in the mornings and their usual route took them right by the Portland ASPCA and, one morning, on their one shared day off of the month, they end up in the lobby.

“We’ll just look,” Mal says, leading the way back to the kennels.

“We’re not taking anything home with us,” Lindsey agrees. She runs her fingers along the chainlink and grins when a couple of cats slink out from their beds to nuzzle at her fingers. Mal’s already deeper into the room, enamored with the dogs. 

Lindsey follows her until one of the dogs barks sharply to her left. She turns to look over at the offender.

She’s a scruffy, tan, white, and black mutt that might be part shepherd, though she’s kind of too small for that. She’s sitting tall in her kennel with pointed ears perked and her head cocked to the side. Lindsey’s pretty sure she’s pushing her chest out at her. 

Lindsey walks over to her and she gets up on her back legs while Lindsey crouches down in front of the kennel. Her front paws rests against the fencing and Lindsey rests one of her hands on top of it on her side of the chainlink. The puppy ducks her head and licks at her fingers, much to Lindsey’s chagrin. Then, she drops back to her paws and starts circling, chasing her tail until she loses her balance and flops over onto her side. 

This clumsy puppy reminds her of something. 

Or some_one. _

She starts whimpering and that’s when Lindsey says “We’re taking this one.” 

Mal squeals and practically skips over, squatting to peer into the kennel at their new dog. “Oh, look at you, buddy, you’re a good girl, huh? You’re a good girl!” The dog barks happily at her.

They leave with a dog even though they work too much and there are only two of them in the house.

-

Even though Rose scrubbed in on the surgery, Lindsey’s the one who rounds on Gemma. She’s doing much better with the clot removed and they’ve got her on blood thinners now. She’s sitting up and playing on her phone when Lindsey enters the room the next morning. 

“Hey, Gemma. How are you today?”

“Do you think I’ll get to go home today? I’m missing brunch with my friends.” She shows Lindsey a series of Instagram photos and Lindsey wonders what kind of people have time to go to brunch on a Thursday morning. 

“Maybe. We’ll have to see what Dr. Heath thinks.”

“What do you think?” 

Lindsey’s surprised. She didn’t think Gemma even saw her as a physician, much less one whose opinion she’d listen to. “I’d probably keep you until the afternoon, just to make sure you’re all good, but you can probably make dinner with the girls.”

“Awesome. I’m gonna make them let me pick the place, since I almost died and all.”

“We’ll be back for rounds, okay?”

“Okay. Thanks, Dr. Horan.” 

She never gets tired of hearing that. 

-

Emily has a favorite coffee shop about a block from her old place.

Or, well, two blocks from _ Lindsey’s _ place. It’s more like eleven blocks from Kelley’s place. She doesn’t think too hard about the fact that she’s still calling it _ Kelley’s place _ when she lives there, now, too. 

She’s sitting at one of the outdoor tables with coffee and a bagel when it happens. Emily’s busy scrolling through Instagram when the dog bounds up to her, so she doesn’t have time to react when she hops up on the empty seat next to her and snatches the bagel right off of her plate. 

“Hey!”

The dog has the decency to look vaguely chastised but continues munching on her breakfast. Emily can’t help but laugh. 

“Hey, you! Stop that!” Emily’s still stifling laughter when the dog’s owner comes jogging up to them. The speckled puppy hops off of the chair as soon as she sees her, tail wagging a little bit cautiously. 

Lindsey folds her hands behind her head as she approaches, a carefully neutral expression on her face. “Of course,” she mutters to herself, but Emily hears her. She ignores it.

“Hey. Sorry about her. She’s…”

“Awesome. You got a dog?” Emily sounds both surprised and amused by this revelation. The puppy has abandoned Lindsey in favor of sitting on top of one of Emily’s feet and Emily leans over to pet her between the ears. 

“Yeah. We got a dog.” Emily looks up at her. Lindsey considers, for a second, letting Emily wonder. It wouldn’t be unfair, really, but she can’t really bring herself to lie, even by omission. “Mal and me.”

If Emily’s shoulders seem to relax at that news, Lindsey overlooks it. Their dog is leaning heavily into Emily’s leg and has her eyes closed while Emily scratches her chin.

“What’s her name?”

Lindsey rolls her eyes. “She doesn’t have one yet. Mal keeps vetoing every one I come up with, and she wanted to call her Taylor Swift, so.”

“Man, I miss you guys.” Emily regrets saying it as soon as the words leave her mouth. Lindsey is just looking at her, but she can feel the unsaid words hanging between them. 

_ You could have just picked me. _

_ I know. _

Instead of saying any of that, Emily focuses back on the puppy. “She looks like a Bagel to me.” It makes Lindsey laugh, which automatically makes Emily’s day ten times better. She’s _ missed _ that sound. 

The bell on the cafe door dings and suddenly, Kelley’s at her side, holding a scone and another coffee. “They were out of blueberry but I figured we could just split a cho- Oh, hey, Horan.” She brings her coffee to her lips. 

Lindsey leans down to clip the dog’s leash to her collar and gives it a little tug. “Come on, bud. We gotta go.”

“Don’t leave on my account,” Kelley grins around her cup and rests a hand lightly on the back of Emily’s chair. 

Shaking her head, Lindsey points to her watch. “No, I’m just, you know, timing myself. So I should go.”

“Good luck.”

“See you around?” Emily asks and Lindsey offers her a noncommittal shrug that makes her day about five times worse. 

-

Lindsey gets home ten minutes later to find Mal on the couch. The puppy barks at her until she unclips her from her leash and then bowls into the living room to wedge herself between Mal’s feet and the arm of the couch. 

From the kitchen, Lindsey calls, “What do you think of Bagel?”

“I already ate, but I think there’s some in the bread box.”

“No, like, as a name.” 

Mal is quiet for a second or two and then squeals in approval. “It’s perfect!”

-

Alex gets to Portland on a Friday.

Kelley hasn’t returned any of her phone calls and she knows where Emily works. Presumably, that’s also where Kelley works. She’ll be able to find them if she wants. 

And she does. Just not yet.

Instead, she wants to drink enough to forget why she abandoned one of the top surgical residency programs in the country for the twelfth-best. She has to keep reminding herself that one of the top cardiothoracic surgeons in the country works at Providence to keep herself from getting back on another plane.

Uprooting herself and potentially ruining her career for a girl was stupid, even if that girl _ was _ Kelley O’Hara.

So, she’s sitting at a bar across from the hospital and a block down from her hotel on drink number four. Everything is pleasantly warm and just a little bit fuzzy around the edges, but she’s still sober enough to know that the woman who takes the empty stool beside her is gorgeous. 

She hasn’t gotten laid since Kelley -and for good reason- but she’s just drunk enough not to care about Kelley, right now. Instead, she turns towards the stranger and holds out her hand to shake. “Hey. I’m Alex.”

The woman beside her turns, gives her a once-over, and then angles her body inward so she can return the handshake firmly. 

“I’m Lindsey.” 

“Nice to meet you, Lindsey.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, did we have fun?
> 
> you can find me on twitter @cornerkix_ for more chaos


	7. games people play

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Hey, Lindsey? Sorry for bugging you so early, but Kelley’s got this case and it’s surgical and, I don’t know, you still have the best hands I know-” There’s some noise on the other end of the line, but Emily powers through it. “-so could you maybe get to the hospital?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first of all, sorry for the length delay in chapters here. real life, holidays, and work caused my binge to pause and my time for writing to disappear.
> 
> second, thanks to em (slidetacklefc) for looking this over for any obvious typos before i posted it.
> 
> third, i hope you all like chaos because that's kind of what alex morgan brings to the table. enjoy!

Lindsey wakes up with a splitting headache and her mouth full of cotton. She can still taste tequila. And her phone keeps ringing. 

“Can you turn that thing off?” 

The voice is unfamiliar, but that’s not entirely surprising. Her spiral has actually been 80% Tinder driven and only 20% people she works with, so far. She rolls onto her back and fumbles blindly for the phone, intending to turn it off.

Emily’s contact photo flashes across the screen, though, and she hesitates. 

Emily doesn’t  _ call _ . Even when they were together, they would text. She doesn’t know why Emily would call her this early in the morning unless something’s wrong, so she answers it. Her bedmate groans and rolls onto her other side. 

“Em?” 

“Hey, Lindsey? Sorry for bugging you so early, but Kelley’s got this case and it’s surgical and, I don’t know, you still have the best hands I know-” There’s some noise on the other end of the line, but Emily powers through it. “-so could you maybe get to the hospital?”

Lindsey’s already on her feet and half dressed before Emily’s done talking. It’s not the surgery, though she’s sure it’ll be cool. It’s because it’s  _ Emily.  _

“Yeah, just give me, like, fifteen minutes and I’ll be there.”

“Awesome, thanks. I owe you.” 

“Yeah, you do.” But not for coming in early on a Saturday. 

Emily doesn’t bite. She just says “See ya,” and hangs up.

Lindsey looks around for her shirt and finds the brunette from the bar wearing it and little else. “Oh, um, hey, sorry. I have to get to work.”

“So I heard.” The woman stretches a little bit and the henley Lindsey had been wearing last night rides up a little bit. Lindsey averts her eyes a second too late. The woman just grins at her a little smugly, shrugs out of the shirt, and trades it for one on the floor. “Thanks for last night, Lindsey.” 

“Uh, you’re welcome…” She doesn’t remember this woman’s name. She doesn’t remember much of  _ anything _ from the past twelve hours. Her face feels hot and she’s glad for the darkness of the hotel room. 

“Alex.”

“Right, yeah, Alex. It was...nice meeting you.” 

“You, too.” 

Lindsey grabs her keys and jacket and escapes the hotel room with some of her dignity still intact. She can brush her teeth in the locker room.

-

When she gets to the locker room, she’s surprised to find that she's not alone. Tobin’s there, too, tying up her shoelaces and looking like she just woke up. Lindsey hovers near her locker. “Hey, Linds.” Her mouth quirks upward just a little. “Did Sonny call you?”

“Did Christen call you?”

“Yeah, she did. There’s some kind of peds emergency.” Tobin stands and stretches before heading towards the door. “Hey,” she says thoughtfully. “Are you even on call tonight?”

Lindsey doesn’t answer. She just changes into scrubs and Tobin laughs her way out of the room. After throwing her stuff into her locker, Lindsey brushes her teeth and pulls her hair back. 

That’s when she notices a hickey disappearing under the collar of her shirt. She presses her fingertips to it for a second and then leaves for the peds floor. 

When she gets there, it’s eerily deserted. The hallway is dimly lit, only every third overhead light on, and there is only one nurse behind the desk. 

Hospitals at three a.m. are supposed to be quiet. And, for the most part, this one is. 

There’s a door open at the end of the corridor, yellow light spilling into the hall, and as she approaches, Lindsey can hear voices filtering out of the room.

She walks faster. 

-

“Have you ever done this before?” Emily’s voice is higher than it usually is. She’s standing on one side of an incubator in the nursery, white knuckles clutching fast to the side of it. 

Tobin stands across from her, sweatshirt sleeves rolled up and hands tucked into her pockets. 

Christen standing between the two of them, at the head of the baby’s incubator, one hand curled into the side so that she can stroke his tiny cheek. “Dr. Meyer will be there, too, Emily.”

Lindsey slips into the room and takes the open space at the baby’s feet, making an awkward, tense square. Emily is looking at Christen, but the scoff she exhales on is directed at Tobin. Tobin just shrugs. 

“You called my intern,” she points out, tipping her chin towards Lindsey. “Would you trust her hands more than mine?”

Lindsey feels the heat creeping into her face as all three of them turn to look at her instead. Emily rolls her shoulders. “I think Lindsey’s hands are really capable.”

“And mine aren’t? I’m her senior.”

“And you’re bold and take risks he doesn’t need.”

“Well,” Tobin says with a pointed glance at Christen. “I’m what you’ve got. Lindsey’ll scrub in, but she’s got to see one before she can do one. Half an hour?” 

Lindsey nods. 

As Tobin turns to go, Lindsey finally glances down at the baby in the warmer.

Her breath catches in her throat.

He’s...tiny. He’s probably the smallest newborn she’s ever seen, and she spent a month in the NICU as a student before realizing she didn’t really like working with the stressed out, terrified parents much. Christen still has a hand in the incubator and his tiny fist barely curls around her pinky finger. 

There are tubes and wires everywhere: oxygen to help him breathe, though he is, somehow, doing it on his own. Two IVs, one pumping fluids and the other pre-op antibiotics. Heart monitors and a pulse ox and he’s barely big enough to have enough skin for all of it. 

His intestines are outside of his body, which is the real problem, here. This is a surgical problem. When something isn’t supposed to be there, they cut it out. When something isn’t in the right place, they put it back where it belongs. 

Emily’s watching her. She’s watching as Lindsey presses her palm to the plastic, while she peeks at the name written on the card at the front of the incubator, as she doesn’t look away from the baby as Christen asks her if she’s seen this before.

“Only in books.” Lindsey sticks her hand through one of the openings in the warmer so that she can touch Jackson’s little foot. She gives it a little squeeze and he tries to kick her. A small smile appears, crooked, only one of her dimples poking out. 

“Atta boy.”

Emily’s glad Lindsey will be in the OR, too, even if it means she won’t have someone to talk her through the procedure from the gallery.

-   
Tobin’s OR playlist is a lot of indie rock. Lindsey has slowly been slipping a few of her own tracks into it. As they prepare to cut, Tobin looks at her from across the table. 

Lindsey’s too busy staring at how small the baby is in comparison to it. It’s a pediatric table, but it’s still way too big for Jackson, at the center of the table. 

“Lindsey?”

“What?”

“I said, this song is depressing. What is it?”

“Oh, uh, Dermot.” When Tobin looks perplexed behind her surgical mask, she adds “Kennedy?”

“Stop messing with my playlists. Ready to go?” Their attending is still asleep. Lindsey feels a combination of a thrill and panic rising up her spine. She just nods. Tobin does, too, and asks for the scalpel. 

It’s tough work. Lindsey doesn’t have to  _ do _ much, other than keep the baby’s organs from getting in Tobin’s way while she makes the cut into the abdominal cavity, but everything about Jackson is so small that they have to switch to a smaller blade twice. Tobin’s taking her time, being meticulous about it, and Lindsey looks up, then, into the gallery.

Tobin looks up, meets her gaze, and rolls her eyes. 

“I love that kid, but she’s kind of an idiot sometimes.” 

Lindsey thinks Tobin’s talking about the confrontation in the nursery. 

(Tobin is not talking about that at all.)

-

Lindsey gets to close. She looks up at Emily when Tobin hands her the sutures and she tries to smile from behind her mask. 

Emily looks small and tired from down here, pale and with dark circles. She tosses a thumbs-up Lindsey’s way and Lindsey turns her attention back to the task at hand. 

She throws a line of perfect mattress sutures into the fragile skin and, just like that, the kid’s pieces are all back where they’re supposed to be. 

The song flips to something else by Dermot, and Tobin groans. 

-

Emily is sitting by Jackson’s warmer when Hayley and Caitlin arrive the next morning. 

“Hey, Son, brought you tea. Decaf.” 

She doesn’t reach for it, just shifts in her chair so that her cheek isn’t pressed right up against the incubator anymore. There’s a red streak on her cheek from leaning against it.

“You’re going to break duty hours if you stay,” Hayley points out, sliding the cup further towards her and reaching for Jackon’s chart. 

“You also look like shit,” Caitlin says helpfully. Emily doesn’t even have the energy to glare at her. Instead, she squints at the baby dozing in his warmer and studies the monitors he’s hooked up to. 

“Oh, gastroschisis? Who did the repair?”

“We did,” Tobin replies as she and her duckling line of interns files into the nursery. Lindsey goes to stand on the other side of the incubator, though she does give Emily’s shoulder a light squeeze as she passes. 

Caitlin and Hayley share a look. 

“Dr. Horan?” Tobin is checking her watch and that sets Emily off. She gets to her feet so quickly that she knocks her chair over and the room spins on its axis. She sways a little bit and her vision goes a little patchy. Lindsey’s mouth is moving but Emily can’t make out anything over the buzzing in her ears. Caitlin has an arm around her shoulders and Hayley’s got a hand on her back.

“-you okay?” 

The room blurs back into view and she blinks once, then twice, as Lindsey Horan swims in front of her. “Just tired,” she says, and she watches Lindsey cast a worried look at Hayley over her shoulder. “Need a nap and then I’ll head home. I’m not back until tomorrow anyway.” 

“Maybe you should-”

“Maybe you should worry about your own cases,” Emily cuts Tobin off and lets Caitlin steer her towards the door. 

“Hey,” Lindsey says, voice low. Emily really just wants to go to bed, but she looks back at her anyway because she can’t ever leave Lindsey behind. “I’ll look after him today. You don’t have to worry.”

Somehow, that makes her feel better. 

-   
After rounding on the post-op patients, the team rounds on the pre-op patients. Because she’s already cut today, Lindsey’s only real job is to keep an eye on Jackson while he recovers. She breaks off from the group an hour in to do that.

“I’m just saying,” Rose complains to Mal as they follow Tobin into the bowels of the hospital. “That she wasn’t even on call and Sonnett should have called  _ me _ .”

“Well, Lindsey  _ was _ closer…”

“Only because she was getting so-”

“Will you three shut up?” Tobin doesn’t even look back at them. She just keeps walking towards the ER. “You don’t just get to pick the coolest cases. You have to fight for them. And if Lindsey’s getting to cut over you? That’s because she’s doing something right.”

“Yeah, the peds intern.”

Tobin  _ does _ turn around, then. She levels Russell with a long look and then assigns him to write all of her pre-op and post-op notes. 

Rose doesn’t say anything else about Lindsey for the rest of the day.

-

Kelley’s on days. Emily’s on nights. It means that they don’t cross paths much, but she has the night off tonight. She does run into her on the way to the on-call room, though. Emily’s ditched Hayley and Caitlin by telling them about the kid with the third eye in room 710. 

Kelley smiles at her so widely it makes her eyes pop and Emily feels her stomach twist, but not in the pleasant way it used to in the early days of their relationship. She forces herself to smile back at her. 

“Morning, sunshine.” Kelley offers her a package of peanut butter crackers and a small carton of milk and her stomach flips again. This was her post-finals studying snack in medical school. A rush of appreciation for this woman makes Emily reach for both the snack and Kelley herself. 

“Thanks,” she breathes, muffled into Kelley’s shoulder. 

Kelley just chuckles quietly into the crook of Emily’s neck and then leans back to hold her by the biceps at arm’s length. “Long night?” 

“Yeah. I’m gonna nap here, I think.”

“Good idea. Maybe we can order in tonight? That Thai place you like.”

Emily nods. “I’d like that.”

-

Emily can’t sleep.

It’s not that the bed isn’t comfortable. The hospital actually shelled out for some pretty expensive mattresses. It’s just that the bed feels too big, even if it’s only a twin bunk. She’s used to sleeping with other people. At home, Kelley occupies half of the bed, limbs splayed out.

And she’s not used to sleeping here alone, either. 

She’s scrolling through dog videos on instagram when the door clicks open. She expects Cait or Hayley stealing a quick power nap, but it’s Lindsey who ducks her head waves hello.

“I can be on top,” she says.

Emily cracks up.

It takes Lindsey a second to catch up, but when she does, she flushes a pretty shade of red and Emily thinks that she wishes she could kiss her. 

Then, she feels bad for thinking that. 

It doesn’t stop Emily from scooting over or hooking her fingers into the collar of Lindsey’s scrub top, though. She pulls Lindsey towards her and Lindsey is forced to duck her head and climb into bed with her. 

They shuffle for a while before figuring it out. Just like before, Lindsey and Emily fit perfectly into this twin bed like puzzle pieces. Lindsey curls her body around Emily from behind and props her chin upon her shoulder. Emily reaches back for one of Lindsey’s hands and tugs until Lindsey drapes it loosely over her waist.

Emily keeps pushing back against her and Lindsey’s never going to be able to sleep like this. The hand at Emily’s stomach reaches for Emily’s hip instead, squeezing firmly. It has the opposite effect, at first. Emily just pushes back against her more firmly and Lindsey takes a deep breath that tickles Emily’s ear. 

“Stop moving,” Lindsey grumbles and something about the seriousness of her tone makes Emily listen. 

That, and she’s so  _ tired _ . She lets Lindsey force one leg between both of hers and take her hand over her stomach and feels Lindsey’s entire body relax against her. Her breathing evens out within moments and that’s enough to lull Emily to sleep, too.

She’s been having trouble sleeping lately, but she’s out like a light in two minutes with Lindsey. 

It must be the night shift.

-

When Lindsey wakes up an hour later, she’s face-to-face with Emily. She must have rolled over in her sleep. She can count Emily’s freckles from here. 

Lindsey doesn’t want to move. Emily looks relaxed for the first time all day. The almost-permanent crease in her forehead has relaxed. She’s breathing softly with the ghost of a smile upon her lips. 

She shouldn’t be looking at Emily’s lips. If she does it for too long, she can taste her, and that’s not something she should be thinking about a married woman whether they’re cuddled up in bed or not. 

Lindsey starts counting freckles instead.

Emily stirs, mumbles something that sounds suspiciously like her name, and leans forward just enough that their lips brush. 

Emily’s asleep, Lindsey reasons. She could be thinking about anything and even if she  _ is _ thinking about her, what she thinks about while sleeping doesn’t really count. Lindsey does  _ not _ kiss her back. 

But then Emily’s eyes blink open and she gives Lindsey a sleepy smile and says “Hey, Linds.”

She looks Lindsey in the eye. Her gaze drops to Lindsey’s mouth and then back again. She kisses Lindsey full on the mouth. Lindsey goes slack in her arms for a second before returning it, a breathy sigh pressed between them and into Emily’s mouth. 

They kiss for seconds or minutes or hours. It’s not suggestive or leading to anything else. It’s just sharing breath and space and having an entire conversation without saying anything at all.

Then, Lindsey’s pager goes off and they’re forced to go back to reality.

-   
  
The page is the nursery. 911. Lindsey doesn’t have time to think about what napping with Emily means because Jackson’s stitches have blown. His organs are spilling out onto the bed and the nurses are freaking out. 

Tobin’s there, thank God, and she directs them all to the OR before Lindsey has time to freak out. 

“Were my sutures too loose? Was this my fault? What should I have done differently?”

“It’s not you,” Tobin says as they head to the OR. “There pressure in his thoracic cavity was too much with the respirator when he started breathing on his own. There was nowhere for it to go except down and there was an opening. It just means once we patch him up, he’ll probably be breathing on his own.”

Tobin always knows what to say. Lindsey nods. She wants to tell Emily what’s going on. She’s about to go do that when Tobin grabs her wrist. “You’re scrubbing in. He’s your patient, not mine.”

“Okay. Yeah. Of course.” 

When they get into the OR, Emily’s in the gallery looking sleepy and pale. Lindsey wants to explain what’s going on but doesn’t have time because the nurse is handing her instruments. She just looks up at Emily and smiles behind her mask, hoping it’s reassuring to her in some way.

Then she gets to work.

-   
  
Kelley is in the OR for some reason. 

Kelley never goes into the OR if she can help it, but she’s talking to Tobin about...something. The intercom is off, so Emily’s not sure what’s going on. She can tell that Jackson’s sutures blew, but Lindsey’s fixing them. She can’t take her eyes off of Lindsey’s steady hands. There’s no one else she’d trust with her patient more.

Alex is in the gallery for some reason. 

Emily didn’t even know she was in Portland, much less in Providence Hospital. 

She’s trying to ignore her, but Alex won’t let her.

“I slept with her, you know.”

Emily scoffs. She knows Alex is trying to get a rise out of her. She also knows that reacting is pointless. She can’t stop herself from saying “Yeah, I know. I was there.”

“Not her,” Alex says. Emily finally turns to look at her, annoyed at how relaxed Alex looks. She’s completely unphased by breaking up a marriage. It’s maddening. 

“What?” She regrets asking as soon as the smirk appears on Alex’s face.

“Lindsey Horan. We met at the bar last night. She’s good, right?”

Emily stares at her. Alex is staring at Lindsey’s hands, too. Emily’s going to throw up. 

“With her hands, I mean.” 

Emily has to go. She shoves past a couple of surgery interns on her way. She doesn’t look back. 

-   
  
By the time she makes it to lunch, the others are almost done. She sits down at their table anyway and is three bites into her sandwich before she catches up with the conversation. 

“-Morgan is only a third year, but I heard she cut into a guy’s chest on the side of the road once and she was only a second year, then.”

“You know what _ I _ heard about Alex?” Rose says, leaning in towards Mal and waggling her eyebrows. It’s about then that Lindsey realizes they’re talking about the same Alex she slept with less than twelve hours ago. She hopes she’s not blushing.

“What?” Mal eggs her on and Lindsey bites back a smile. Mal lives for gossip. She feels a little bit like she’s back in high school.

“You know why Sonnett and O’Hara broke things off, right?” Mal shakes her head.

Lindsey’s stomach churns. If she wasn’t paying attention to the conversation before, she is  _ now _ . 

“She cheated on her. With her best friend. And you know who that friend was?”

“ _ No. _ ”

“Yeah. Sonnett took this job instead of one out in Virginia to try and start over, but O’Hara followed her and now Morgan followed  _ them _ . It’s a total shit show.” Rose sounds absolutely gleeful. 

Lindsey feels like she’s going to be sick. Her cheeks are red now. She can feel the heat there. It’s not embarrassment anymore, though. She’s angry. She can feel it in her tense shoulders all the way down into her clenched fingers. 

“I hope Alex stays, though.”

“Why?” Lindsey finally asks. She wants Alex Morgan to get as far away from Emily (and, she guesses, from Kelley) as possible. 

“Because,” Rose says, drawing the syllables out as if she’s speaking to a toddler. “She’s going to teach me how to do a pericardial window in the field. Duh.”

Lindsey barely hears her. She’s on her feet, her lunch abandoned. Mal asks her if she’s going to eat her friends. 

Lindsey doesn’t answer.   
  
-   
  
It all happens so fast. 

Lindsey  _ means _ to find Emily and check on her, but she runs into Alex first at the nurses’ station.

She  _ literally _ runs into her rounding the corner and the easy smirk that curls Alex’s mouth upward pisses Lindsey off. 

“Hey, Linds. Long time, no see.” Alex Morgan is staring back at her with her perfect smile and her good hands and Lindsey thinks about Emily, sad and curled into her in a too-small twin bed, and she reacts before she can think about it.

With one smooth movement, Lindsey draws back her hand, curls it into a fist, and punches Alex right in the jaw. 

She staggers back a step, holds a hand to her face, and then punches back. Her fist connects solidly with Lindsey’s cheek and she recoils before going back for more. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Emily, wearing a t00-big Yale sweatshirt, standing still with her hand pressed to her mouth. 

Alex lands another punch and Lindsey stops looking at Emily. Before she can punch back, people are getting between them. Kelley steps in front of her first and Lindsey rolls her eyes from over Kelley’s shoulder.

Then, Kelley turns her back on Alex and reaches for Lindsey’s hand instead. Lindsey’s cradling it to her chest, already feeling the sting into her elbow. “Are you stupid?” Kelley growls at her, but Lindsey’s too busy watching Hayley and Caitlin herd Emily out of the hallway. “You  _ need _ your hands.”

“I used my left one,” Lindsey replies, like that makes it any better. 

Kelley pulls Lindsey into the nurses’ station and makes her sit down while she finds an ice pack to apply to Lindsey’s swollen knuckles. “What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking,” Lindsey says, getting up and resting the ice pack upon her hand. “That you paid a little bit for cheating but she didn’t.”

“What?”

“You heard me.” Lindsey gets up and disappears down the hallway, ignoring Kelley calling after her retreating back. 

-

“Well,” Mal says, wincing as she puts Lindsey’s X-ray up on the light box for her to look at, too. “It’s a boxer’s fracture.” She points to the jagged break below the knuckles of her left pinky finger.

Lindsey can tell there’s too much bend there, that’s is misaligned enough that she’ll need, at minimum, a cast and at worst, surgery. 

Her parents will kill her if they find out. She’s a Horan. She’s got a reputation to uphold, and she’s not doing a very good job of it.

“It could be worse. I had one of the orthopods look at the film already. They think you’ll be good with just a cast for six weeks.” Lindsey appreciates that Mal knows her well enough to know not to chastise her. 

She got enough of that from Kelley.

_ Six weeks. _ She’s not going to be able to get into the OR for six weeks. Whatever advantage she has over the other surgery interns has disappeared with one punch. 

Lindsey still kind of thinks it was worth it. 

“Okay. Fix me up, Doc.” 

Mal does a good job with the cast. It’s not too tight or too loose and there’s enough padding that it won’t rub. But even the best surgeon can’t operate one-handed.

“Lindsey.”

Russell is the last person she feels like seeing right now. She doesn’t even look at him, but he keeps talking anyway. “Chief wants to see you ASAP.” 

He sounds smug. Mal looks like a deer in the headlights. 

Lindsey shrugs and gets to her feet, flexing the fingers of her left hand experimentally. 

“Cool.” This day just keeps getting better and better.

-

Lindsey doesn’t go home. Even after the Chief of Surgery tells her that she’ll be spending the next month, minimum, on probation and covering the ER, she can’t make herself leave the hospital. Not when Jackson is still so little and sick and alone. 

She changes out of her scrubs. If she’s in street clothes, she’s really just visiting and no one can keep her from doing that. She takes the elevator up to the peds floor.

When the doors open, she comes face to face with Alex. 

Alex stares at Lindsey. Lindsey stares back. There’s a shiner blossoming above Alex’s left eye and a cut on her jaw that’s been patched messily with butterfly stitches. 

Lindsey wonders what she looks like, right now. She’d avoided the mirror in the locker room. 

She considers taking the stairs, but she doesn’t really want to give Alex the satisfaction. Instead, she gets inside of the elevator and goes to press the number three, but it’s already lit up. Lindsey clenches her jaw and gives Alex a sidelong glance. 

“You don’t know the whole story.”

She wasn’t even going to talk to Alex. She was just going to let her stew in silence. But she can’t be quiet about  _ this _ . “I don’t need to know the whole story to know you slept with Emily’s  _ wife _ .”

“Oh, so you think Emily’s always right, too? Typical.” 

“Kelley -Dr. O’Hara doesn’t think that. If she did, she’d have stayed away.” 

“The world isn’t black and white, Lindsey. You have to stop thinking like a surgeon about everything.” 

“I _ am _ a surgeon.”

“So am I.” 

They stand in silence for a second or two before the doors ding open. Lindsey steps out first. Alex follows her. Lindsey’s hands are balled into fists at her sides again, and she has to keep walking to keep from hurling more words -or worse- at Alex Morgan.

When she gets to the nursery, Kelley’s there, too. She’s checking on one of the other babies, one Lindsey doesn’t know. She does glance up when Lindsey enters, but she doesn’t say anything when Lindsey drags a rocking chair over to Jackson’s warmer and reaches into the opening for him. 

He’s still so small, but he’s hooked up to less machines now that he’s breathing on his own. He’s off the IV, for now, even though he still has the port on his tiny hand. “I’m sorry,” Lindsey murmurs, her head close to the baby’s as she leans over. 

“You know,” Kelley says. Lindsey sits ramrod straight and prepares herself for a lecture or to be told to get the hell out of Kelley’s nursery. She is the head of pediatrics, after all. 

But she doesn’t tell Lindsey to go. In fact, she offers a reason for her to stay. “Babies like this, the preemies who don’t have moms to curl up to, sometimes we cohabitat them if they’re multiples. But if not, sometimes we kangaroo them. Have you heard of it?”

Lindsey shakes her head. She’s looking at Jackson instead of at Kelley, stroking the fingers of her good hand over the fine hair on the crown of his head. “Skin to skin contact and sharing body heat is important for bonding, but sometimes, it makes babies feel better, too.” 

Kelley finishes whatever she’s doing with the other infant and goes to leave. She hovers in the doorway with her fist against the wall. “Visiting hours technically end at eight, so if Martha gives you a hard time, just tell her you’re doing Dr. O’Hara a favor.” 

“Thanks.” 

Once Kelley’s gone, Lindsey Googles  _ kangarooing _ . It makes more sense with the pictures. She looks at Jackson, little and pale and alone, and starts moving before her brain can catch up with her. She shrugs out of her shirt and leaves it on the rocking chair and carefully lifts Jackson out of his warmer. It’s more difficult to do this one-handed, but he’s so small that it works out okay.

He weighs nothing. It feels like holding a loaf of bread to her chest, but Jackson shifts and curls into her and he stops crying, which she counts as a win. The alarm blares, but only because he’s no longer on the pad tracking him. 

Nurse Martha comes barrelling into the nursery, looks at Lindsey, shirtless, cradling a baby to her chest with the hand not in a cast, and raises her eyebrows. “Explain.”

“I’m Dr. Horan.”

“Yeah, I  _ know _ who you are. What are you  _ doing _ ?”

“Kangarooing.” Lindsey shifts Jackson so that he’s tucked into the crook of her neck and he curls a tiny fist around a flyaway strand of her hair. She meets Martha’s gaze. “I’m doing Dr. O’Hara a favor.”

Martha’s mouth twists downward, but she says nothing else. She does hand Lindsey a warmed blanket, which she gratefully accepts and drapes over her own shoulders. Who knew even the overheated nursery would be cold without a shirt?

She rocks Jackson and retells her day, from the surgery to her nap with Emily to punching Alex in the face. By the time she’s finished, Jackson’s breathing has evened out and he’s still not crying. 

Lindsey settles into one of the padded rocking chairs. Within five minutes, she’s dozing, too.

That’s how Emily finds them before she leaves the hospital. She wanted to check in on Jackson and now she feels like  _ she’s _ the one who got punched in the face. Lindsey has the baby cradled in her arms and she’s only wearing a lacy bra which means she didn’t go home after the bar last night. 

Emily swallows, throws another blanket over Lindsey and the baby, and sneaks back out of the nursery.

-   
When Lindsey gets home that night, Emily is sitting on the front porch swing. She’s all wrapped up in a too-big hoodie, a baseball cap pulled low with her legs pulled in to her chest, but Lindsey would recognize the slope of her shoulders, the way her hair sticks out from beneath her hat anywhere.

Lindsey hesitates on the bottom step of her own porch when she hears Emily take a sharp inhale. She’s never really seen Emily cry before, but she can tell, even while Emily tries to keep her composure. Her shoulders are too tense, her breathing a little too loud, and if it wasn’t so dark, Lindsey would be able to see the warm path her tears are making upon her cheeks. 

Without saying anything, Lindsey walks up the steps and across the porch, slips her keys into the lock and goes inside. 

Emily doesn’t hold it in anymore, then. She exhales on a sob and buries her head in her hands. She doesn’t have anywhere to go. She can’t go to Kelley’s place, which never felt like home anyway, because of the guilt gnawing at her stomach. She can’t go to Rose’s, because Rose has chosen Lindsey like everyone else who knows them both. 

She though that, maybe, she could come here, but that was stupid to think. She picked Kelley and no amount of stolen kisses in the NICU can make up for that. 

The front door swings open. Bagel appears first, all wagging tail and boundless energy, and tumbles down the last couple of stairs and onto the sidewalk. Lindsey follows, dressed in sweats and a t-shirt and only hesitates for a second before following the dog into the front yard. She returns in a couple of minutes, Bagel’s leash loose in her hand. 

“Sorry. She’s been alone since lunchtime.” 

She takes one look at Emily and ties Bagel’s leash to one of the rungs in the porch so that she can sit down beside Emily and pull her in close. When she gets an arm around Emily’s shoulders, she can feel her shoulders shaking.

Emily turns inward, curls her fingers in the front of Lindsey’s shirt, and presses her face into the crook of Lindsey’s neck. She can feel the warm tears there, but she doesn’t say anything. She just cradles the back of Emily’s head, runs her fingers down along her neck and rubs her back, between her shoulder blades. 

“I keep messing it all up.” The words are muffled, pressed into her throat, and Lindsey  _ feels _ them more than hears them. 

Lindsey shrugs. “You helped save a baby today. You’re doing okay.” 

“That’s not what I mean.”

Lindsey knows that. She doesn’t really have anything to say. If she thinks too hard, Lindsey can taste Emily on her lips. Then she remembers Kelley and feels guilty. The idea of leaving Emily alone and sad on the porch cuts her, though, so here she is. 

Bagel trots up the steps and jumps up onto Emily’s lap. The puppy gives her a few quick licks to her chin and it makes Emily laugh, which Lindsey thinks is a much better sound than the breathy sobs she’s been making for the last five minutes. 

“Okay,” Lindsey decides, standing up and pulling Emily with her. Emily lifts Bagel into her arms instead. “We’re going inside.” When Emily looks like she’s going to start crying again, Lindsey says “It’s freezing. Come on.” 

Emily follows her into the house and kicks off her sneakers before wandering into the living room. Lindsey veers off to the kitchen to make some tea. She boils the water and grabs a mug and a tea bag. The water is still boiling.

She places her palms on the counter and closes her eyes. She takes a few deep, steadying breaths. She tries not to think about how she wants to kiss Emily again, because Emily’s married and that’s not fair to anyone. She thinks about how, even though she’s slept with several people since Emily, no one’s kissed her like  _ that _ .

She’s saved by the whistling teapot and steeps the tea. Then, she takes a deep breath, squares her shoulders, and walks back into the living room, only to find Emily curled up on the couch under a blanket, the TV on, with Bagel curled up near her feet. 

Emily picks her head up when she hears Lindsey’s footsteps. Her eyes are red-rimmed and her bun is messy, the baseball cap forgotten on the coffee table. She looks so comfortable and at home that Lindsey’s heart stutters in her chest before she remembers to keep walking. 

“Here.” Emily accepts the tea and their fingers brush and Lindsey doesn’t think about it. Emily makes room for her on the couch and Lindsey takes it. When she does, Emily leans into her and Lindsey lifts her arm so that Emily can press herself in closer. 

“What are we watching?”

“Chopped. That guy forgot an ingredient but  _ that _ guy undercooked his chicken.” 

“Cool.” 

They make it half an episode before Emily drifts off and Lindsey can’t bear to risk waking her up, so she just steals some blanket and turns off the TV. 

She falls asleep faster beside Emily than she has in weeks.

-

“Hey, Linds, did you want- Oh.” 

Lindsey wakes up with a sore neck and a face full of blonde hair. She shifts a little on the couch and tries to sit up, but an arm around her waist keeps her from doing so completely. She looks down at Emily’s sleeping form and smiles softly. 

Mal clears her throat. “...do you guys want pancakes?”

“Waffles,” Emily supplies helpfully, her voice hoarse with sleep. 

Lindsey presses her lips together to keep from smiling too big and settles back down beside her on the couch for a moment. “You heard her.”

“Sure, waffles. Hi, Emily.”

“What’s up?”

From the floor, Bagel yaps, and Lindsey is forced off of the couch, much to Emily’s dismay. 

“She’s still being house trained. I’ll be back.”

“I hope so. You live here.” 

When she does make it back to the kitchen, Emily, perched on the counter, hands her a cup of coffee, made just how she likes it, and Lindsey takes a sip. Mal’s at the stove cooking. If Lindsey lets herself, she can go back in time about a month and pretend that nothing’s changed at all. It feels normal. It feels  _ right _ . 

Then, Emily’s phone rings and she catches sight of Kelley’s contact picture before Emily can decline the call. 

Lindsey remembers, all at once, that she and Emily aren’t together, on-call room kisses or not. “I gotta get ready for work. Have to check on Jackson.” 

-

Alex Morgan is on the peds floor when Lindsey gets there. She’s wearing her white coat and a Providence Hospital badge.

Lindsey’s wearing a short-arm cast. 

“I hope you won’t let our first meeting form your opinion of me.”

Lindsey recognizes it for what it is. It’s a warning. Alex is a resident. Lindsey’s just an intern. She can make her life hell, if she wants to, and Tobin can only protect her so much. 

“Of course not,” she says, moving further into the nursery to peek at Jackson’s monitor. “We can start over, if you want.”

Alex grins. “That’s the idea, coming here.”

That doesn’t sound very good for Emily. Lindsey doesn’t text her. 

-

“Lavelle, you get cardio. Finch, ortho. Pugh, peds.” Tobin’s looking over patient files on her tablet. She gives Lindsey a glance. “Horan, you’ve got pit duty until your hand heels. Don’t get too rusty.”

Lindsey lifts her casted hand to wave lamely. “I’m just giving these guys a chance to catch up.” 

Her pager goes off before she can even get her shoe tied one-handed. With a sigh, Lindsey stands up and rolls her shoulders. 

She’s got a job to do. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :D?
> 
> love me? hate me? if you wanna yell elsewhere you can request me at cornerkix_ on twitter for more chaos, complaining, and yelling.


	8. no good at saying sorry (one more chance)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey folks! it's been a while. with everything going on in the world this universe was the last one i felt like playing around in, but i've come upon a sudden surplus of "free" time so i pumped this out in a few days. 
> 
> i apologize in advance for any emotional damage this may cause anyone because we're still in the beginnings of this road, i think. i know where we're going. it's just gonna take a while to get there.
> 
> TW for some blood in this chapter? i don't think it's particularly graphic but there's descriptions of an injury in here that some people might not like. it's somewhere in the first third, the scene where lindsey's in the ER, so skim past it if you need to. 
> 
> typos are all me. i just wanted to post this before i had to run. 
> 
> onward!

Bagel is going through a phase.

She’s digging. A lot. And not just in the yard when they take her out. She keeps digging into the carpet in the living room and at the hardwood floors in the hallways if they close their bedroom doors at night. 

Lindsey rolls over and groans at the flashing lights on her alarm clock. _ 4:07 _ blinks back at her.

Normally, she’s supposed to be at the hospital by five, so she would just roll out of bed, take Bagel out, and get ready for work, but with her recent injury she’s covering ER shifts which don’t start until seven.

Bagel doesn’t seem to understand that no matter _ how _ much Lindsey has tried to train her into a new routine. 

She rolls over and texts Mal, hoping her roommate is still home to take the dog out before getting to the hospital. Lindsey is _ just _ drifting back to sleep when her phone buzzes beneath her pillow. She squints at the screen and groans because Mal’s already at work, trying to beat Rose and Russell to the best cases. 

Bagel’s nails on the door are like nails on the chalkboard, so Lindsey swings her legs over the side of the bed and goes to let her out. As soon as she opens the door, Bagel flops onto her haunches and wags her tail happily. 

“I hate you,” Lindsey says. Bagel barks at her as if to say that she knows Lindsey doesn’t. 

She opens the back door and lets Bagel outside. Their yard’s fenced in so she doesn’t bother to go out with her. Bagel will surely make her presence known when she wants to come back inside. Lindsey sits at the kitchen table and aimlessly scrolls Instagram. 

She meant to unfollow Emily after...everything but she’d never gotten around to it. The first post on her feed is one of Emily and Kelley at the pier. Emily’s looking at the camera with a soft smile but Kelley’s just looking at _ Emily _ and it feels like getting punched in the face all over again. 

Her thumb hovers over the _ like _ button. She considers leaving a comment. Then she sees Alex already has.

_ get a room. _

Yep. Like getting punched in the face.

Bagel is digging at the base of the back door so Lindsey is saved from torturing herself scrolling the rest of Emily’s Instagram.

-  
Emily wakes up to coffee now. 

It’s not the shitty instant coffee that she used to make for everyone at Lindsey’s place. Kelley, predictably, has a very expensive coffee machine that makes espressos and lattes and, lucky for Emily, cortados. With oat milk. 

She actually wakes up to breakfast in bed on this day, which strikes her as odd until she realizes what day it is. 

Or what day it _ would _ be if they were still counting their first date as their anniversary.

Kelley is big on anniversaries. They had their first meeting anniversary, their first date anniversary, and, obviously, their wedding anniversary.

Today is their fourth first date-a-versary...or would be if they hadn’t taken a break somewhere in the middle, there. 

“What’s all this?” Emily asks, pushing herself to sit. The covers drop and Kelley smiles fondly at her upon realizing that she’s fallen asleep in one of her t-shirts. “You know I have to be at work in, like, half an hour, right?”

Kelley shrugs and pushes the tray towards Emily. “I think your boss will understand.”

Emily frowns as she spreads cream cheese across her bagel. She’s thinking about another Bagel while she does it.

“Actually,” she says, taking a large bite and chewing, chasing it with a large sip of her fancy coffee before continuing. “I don’t want people thinking I get special treatment just because we’re…”

She’s not sure _ what _ they are. Technically, they’re still married. Emily never signed the papers she’d had drafted and Kelley had never even gotten a copy, but they’re in the top drawer of her sister’s desk still. 

“Married?” Kelley supplies. Her voice is soft and a little unsure. There was a time when that would make Emily’s heart break. It still makes her chest feel a tiny bit tight but she ignores it.

“I just don’t want there to be a conflict of interest. This is my job, Kel. I was here first.” It sounds a little childish, Emily knows. 

Kelley just nods. “Of course. Here, let me put your coffee in a to-go mug and I’ll get you those Poptarts you like.”

“The chocolate fudge?”

“Only the best for my baby.” 

It still feels a little bit wrong but Emily doesn’t correct her.

-  
Lindsey doesn’t really _ like _ the ER. 

It’s not that it’s boring or anything. She’s just a surgeon. The idea of stabilizing a patient enough to either discharge them home or ship them upstairs for somebody else to fix bothers her. She’s used to _ fixing _ the problem, but that’s gotten a little bit more complicated with her hand in a cast. 

One of the ER attendings hands her a chart. “I don’t do kids, so you’re gonna get any that roll in today.” 

“Great.” Lindsey isn’t sure whether she hopes Emily has the Peds consult pager today or prays that she doesn’t. She’s not really sure _ where _ they stand but she also knows that she can’t just go around kissing a married woman.

Whose wife has seniority over her.

And whose homewrecking former friend had broken her hand. 

Lindsey ducks into the exam room to see a redheaded little boy about four cradling his right arm to his chest. The girl who’s with him looks about fourteen and she’s panicking. 

“Is this something you can fix? Because I’m just the babysitter and I didn’t mean anything. We were out walking and he stepped off the curb and into the street and a truck was coming, so I just yanked him back and we heard a pop and-”

Lindsey holds up a hand. It’s the one with the cast. The little boy blinks at her and then giggles. Lindsey wiggles her fingers at him. The girl has stopped talking, at least. 

“I can fix it. It’s called a subluxed radial head.” The teenager looks at her like she has three heads. “It just means when you pulled on his arm it popped something out of place, but I can fix it up just by giving you a little hug, okay Ryan?” 

Ryan bites his lip. There are tear tracks on his freckled cheeks. Lindsey’s heart hurts a little bit. She doesn’t know how Emily _ does _ this every day.

...she really needs to stop thinking about Emily. She’s at work. She has stuff to do.

“Did you call his parents?”

“No.”

“Okay. That’s fine. You can wait until after.” Lindsey turns her attention away from the babysitter and looks at Ryan instead. “Hey, bud, so I can’t really do this part because I need two hands, but I can teach-” She looks at the teenager. 

“Emily.”

Of course. Lindsey resists the urge to place her palm on her forehead.

“-I can teach Emily how.” When the girl looks terrified, Lindsey gives her a small smile. “It’s easy. I promise.”

Emily steps up beside her and Lindsey sits on the bed beside Ryan. “We’ll practice on me first, okay? So put your hands here and here.” Emily puts one hand at Lindsey’s Elbow and the other at her wrist, fingers encircling. “And feel that bone there at my elbow? Yeah. Keep your thumb right there. Now what I want you to do is just pull a little bit to straighten the arm out…”

Emily does.

“And then use the hand at your wrist to turn my arm palm-up. Good. And now just press the forearm in towards the elbow. Great!” She turns back to Ryan. “See? No problem.”

Ryan looks unsure. Emily looks _ more _ unsure.

“Are you really a doctor?”

Lindsey taps the _ MD _ on her badge. “Yep. I have a license and everything. Come on, let’s try it on Ry-guy now.” 

When no one moves, Lindsey adds “We have some really cool stickers for good kids.” 

Tentatively, Ryan extends his arm towards Emily. “Emily.” The name tastes strange upon her tongue. Lindsey tries to shrug it off. “If you just do what you did to me, you’ll fix it. Promise.” 

Her fingers are shaking a little bit, but she replicates the same movements she had when “fixing” Lindsey’s arm. Ryan yells a little bit at first, but he’s not crying. It’s just an anticipatory thing. With a satisfying _ pop _, the bone is back in place. 

“Hey,” Ryan says, flexing and extending his arm experimentally. “I’m all better!”

“Yep. Told you it’d work.”

Emily is very pale. Lindsey claps her on the shoulder as she goes to exit the room. “Just let me get the paperwork and that sticker. You should call his parents, though.”

Emily nods.

Lindsey walks over to the nurses’ station to finish up the chart so she can print out discharge instructions -and a diagram of how to fix nursemaid’s elbow just in case it happens again. She’s halfway through the note when all hell breaks loose.

Paramedics rush in from the ambulance bay, which isn’t really weird on its own, but one of them is _ on top of _ the gurney. They’re not doing CPR, though. Lindsey’s curious, but Dr. Reynolds has already wandered over. 

He takes one look at whatever is happening on the gurney and calls for her. “Horan!” He practically yells, already stepping away from the stretcher. “This one’s all yours.” 

Adrenaline surges in Lindsey’s veins. She abandons her chart easily. There will be time for that later. Something about _ real _ emergencies stirs up the same feelings that being in the OR does. It’s a rush and it’s kind of fun, but people use the emergency department as a doctor’s office lately for medication refills or stitches or work excuses. 

This is _ real _ emergency medicine. Lindsey doesn’t hate it.

When she approaches, Lindsey sees another little kid on the gurney. No wonder Dr. Reynolds passed this one off. 

But this kid is way worse off than Ryan had been. She’s a little bit older, probably around twelve, and her color looks off. There’s a lot of blood on the sheets. She’s crying out in pain. And one of the EMTs has his hand in her chest cavity.

Lindsey pulls a glove on her good hand. “What’s going on?”

“This is Kacey Brown. She and her younger brother found their father’s firearm and one shot was fired here. I can’t be sure, but it seems like the bullet lodged itself in her pericardium. There was a lot of blood in the field and we tried applying pressure to stop it but she coded...we had to open her up.”

Lindsey will never judge an EMT for what they deem right, but she’s not entirely sure on that one. This kid’s _ chest _ is open and she’s still _ conscious _. 

“Maggie, can we get an IV here? I want a bolus of Ringers and get me something peds-dosed for pain. Go on.”

“When I put my hand here, the bleeding stopped…I’m afraid to move now.”

“Yeah, no, don’t.” Lindsey’s head is reeling. She doesn’t often deal with gunshot wounds, but she figures they’ll need visualization. “Get me a portable ultrasound when you get a chance? We’re going into trauma one.” 

She’s already paging the surgery on-call pager and the peds one.

Lindsey’s going to find out if Emily’s on call sooner than later.

-  
Emily hates the consult pager. It never seems to stop ringing and, most of the time, the consults are unnecessary and are done only because the requesting physician isn’t comfortable with kids. 

She is four steps into the hospital when her pager rings. 

“What is it?” Kelley wants to know. “Are you missing my grand rounds presentation?”

Emily holds up the pager which reads the number to the ER. “Oh, ew. Have fun with that, babe.” Kelley leans in to plop a kiss upon her cheek and Emily glances around warily. Lindsey is usually getting her pick-me-up post pre-rounds pre-rounds coffee about now, but she’s nowhere to be seen.

It’s about then that Emily remembers that Lindsey isn’t working on the floors right now because she punched Alex Morgan in the face and broke her hand. 

That still seems like some kind of fucked up fever dream. 

“Hey, you okay?” Kelley’s eyebrows knit in concern.

Emily shrugs. “No, yeah, just gotta go change and stuff. See you later?”

“Yeah. Remember, we’re doing dinner tonight at that new place downtown.”

“What’s the occasion?”

Kelley stares at her. Emily stares back. Then she starts laughing. “Oh, right. The not-anniversary.”

Kelley frowns but Emily doesn’t see it because she’s racing towards the closing elevator doors and yelling at the person who’s just stepped inside to hold it.

They do. Emily almost wishes she hadn’t as she skids to a stop inside. 

Alex looks at her. Emily looks away, but not before noticing that her makeup has only mostly managed to hide the shiner Lindsey’s fist had presumably left behind.

“Are you just not gonna talk to me?” 

The elevator seems to be moving slower than normal. Emily taps her foot. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

“There’s a lot to talk about. Like how your girlfriend punched me in the face yesterday for _ no reason _-”

“She had reasons.”

Alex smirks. Emily kind of wants to wipe it off of her face. Or get Lindsey to do it. 

“I’m sure she did.”

Emily tries not to react to it but she can’t help it. She turns to face Alex and her voice raises a little bit as she asks “What’s _ that _ supposed to mean?”

“It means that she didn’t do that because I slept with her and then bailed.”

Emily’s blood is boiling. She squares her shoulders and takes a step forward so that she’s standing right in front of the doors. They open up on the third floor and she darts out. 

Just before the doors click shut, Emily flings her arm between them and they spring apart again. “What are you doing here anyway? Kelley’s downstairs.” 

Alex grins. “I work here now. It’s my first day.”

Emily stares blankly as the elevator doors close. She touches the tattoo at the back of her neck as she slinks towards the locker room to change and wonders what the hell she did to piss God off so much.

-  
When Rose gets to the ER, she thinks it’s going to be some kind of routine cholecystectomy or maybe an appendectomy. What she doesn’t expect to see is Lindsey talking an EMT through how to get his hand out of a kid’s chest without having her bleed out.

“Hang on,” the kid says, sounding panicked. “If he moves his hand, I could die?”

“No.”

“Yes.”

Lindsey and the paramedic talk at the same time. She gives him a look. “We’re just going to see if you’re still bleeding from that spot, Kacey, and if you are we’ll try and patch it another way.” 

She looks terrified. Lindsey crouches down so that she’s at Kacey’s level. “Kacey. Kace. This is going to be scary but we have to see what happens. I am not going to let you go if I can help it. Okay?”

“You promise?”

Lindsey thinks of Emily again for some reason. She holds her uninjured hand out and extends her pinky. “Pinky promise.” 

Kacey seems to relax just a little bit at that. They link pinkies and Lindsey stands back up and nods at the paramedic. “On three. One...two…” He pulls his hand back on three and blood starts pouring out of the wound.

It’s chaos. There are people yelling. Kacey is crying but then she’s not and her heart rate drops into the fifties. Craig the EMT jumps off of Kacey’s bed and Lindsey somehow ends up taking his place. She’s got her hand in the kid’s chest and she can feel the piece of metal that must be piercing the heart under her pointer finger. 

She looks around wildly and spots Rose in the corner. “What are you doing?” She practically yells, shifting a little bit on the bed so she’s not crushing their patient. “We need an OR. Now. We need cardiothoracic.”

“Who even...what even…?”

“_R__ose. _”

She’s paralyzed. Something about kids being hurt, _ really _ hurt, gets her. She’s standing there with her feet rooted to the spot while Lindsey says something that sounds like the Charlie Brown teacher to Rose. 

Suddenly, someone bumps her shoulder. “Hey, Rosie, what’s...shit.” 

It’s Emily Sonnett and Rose can finally breathe. 

With peds here, they’re in good hands. Emily looks at the patient. She looks at Lindsey with her hand on the patient’s heart and her hair sticking up and her face flushed. She looks back at Kacey. 

“Okay well Rose, can you do an ultrasound? If you go from this side you should be able to see it even with Dr. Horan’s hand there.” 

That’s weird, Rose thinks. It’s just the three of them and the nurses and paramedics in the room so it wouldn’t be weird for Emily to just call her Lindsey, but Rose nods. An ultrasound she can do. She’s good at ultrasounds and there’s no risk of hurting somebody with an ultrasound.

She shuffles around with the machine and gets it set up on the side of the bed opposite Lindsey. She puts gel on the probe and turns the monitor towards Emily and Lindsey and places it on the part of Kacey’s chest that isn’t ripped open. 

The heart comes into view with its familiar anatomy and Rose breathes a sigh of relief. This, she knows. This, she can do. “So that’s…” Emily’s eyebrows and doing that thing where they come together and Lindsey points with her casted hand.

“Right ventricle. Right atrium…” Rose moves the probe a little bit. “Left atrium. Dammit.”

Even without knowing how to read an ultrasound, it’s pretty obvious. The bullet is lodged in Kacey’s left ventricle _ and _ managed to pierce the aorta on the way in, which is probably why there’s so much blood. 

“We need cardio,” Lindsey says.

Normally, Rose would be thrilled. This is what she wants to do...but not on kids. Kids scare her.

“I already called them,” Emily says, looking pale. 

“Why are you making that face?” Lindsey wants to know.

“Because we just hired a new cardiology fellow and she’s probably going to be taking this case.”

“So?”

“So her name’s Alex Morgan.”

-  
When Alex gets into the operating room, she sees Lindsey Horan with her unbroken hand in her patient’s thoracic cavity, Emily Sonnett looking small and pale under the bright surgical lights, and someone she doesn’t recognize who must be her surgery intern looking somehow paler than Sonnett, which is a feat in itself. Emily _ hates _ the operating room.

She gowns and gloves and thanks the scrub nurse who ties her gown before walking up to the table and looking across at the trio. “What’s going on here?”

It’s Lindsey who speaks. “Kacey Brown, age twelve, GSW to the-”

Alex cuts her off. “That’s not what I mean. Why are you and Sonnett in my OR and messing up my sterile field?” 

“Lindsey’s plugging the hole in your patient’s heart.” 

Alex’s gaze shifts to Emily who shifts her weight from foot to foot but lifts her chin defiantly. “What’s your excuse, then?” There’s more to the question and they both know it but Alex isn’t going to start spilling their sordid pasts all over the operating room floor.

At least not on Day One. Give it a week.

“I’m covering the patient when she gets to the floor,” Emily says slowly. She’s talking to Alex but looking at the brunette surgery intern who looks like she’s sweating through her gown. 

Alex is annoyed. Did they give her a dud? Her first choice actually _ would have been _ Horan. Her pedigree speaks for itself. But since _ that’s _ not an option, she would have liked someone who didn’t look like she was going to vomit into her mask at any moment. 

“Great, so go to the floor and we’ll update you after.” 

Emily hesitates for a second. She presses a hand to the small of the other intern’s back as she slouches out of the room. 

That leaves Alex with one intern too many. 

“You’ve got to let go.”

“Every time I do she starts bleeding out.”

“We’ve got blood here.” Alex looks over her shoulder at one of her nurses who confirms, holding up two bags of O negative. Of course this kid can only receive one type. If she wasn’t already gowned, she would run her hand through her hair about now.

“You have to trade spots. I need sterility in my OR.” 

The other intern hasn’t said a word. In fact, she hasn’t looked up from the surgical field even once since Alex walked into the room. “What’s up with her? Is she mute?” 

Lindsey’s face gets red. Alex reflexively takes a step back. She doesn’t want to get punched again. Plus there are lots of sharp instruments in the OR Lindsey could use. 

“She’s scared.”

The brunette’s eyes flick over to Lindsey and her cheeks redden. 

“The OR is no place for cowards. If you can’t do what I ask, go get me someone who can.” The kid still doesn’t move. Alex is looking at the images of the ultrasound that are projected on the wall across from her. 

Slowly, the intern seems to remember how to work her legs and takes one shaky step towards the door and then another. She’s about to reach back to take off her gown. 

“If you do that, though,” Alex says. The girl stops in her tracks. Her shoulders hike up towards her ears. “I’m not going to teach you. You have to learn how to deal with your fear if you’re going to do this job.” 

Lindsey narrows her eyes at her from across the table. 

“Alex-”

“It’s Dr. Morgan here.”

“I think you’re being a little harsh, _ Dr. Morgan. _”

Alex shrugs. “If she won’t help me I’m sure there’s someone in your program who’s capable.” 

Lindsey opens her mouth to say something else, but the other intern has materialized at her side. Her eyes are steely behind her goggles. 

Alex’s mouth quirks up behind her mask. Just a little bit. 

“How do we do this?” Her voice is even. Alex isn’t exactly impressed, but it’s a better start.

“Trade off on three. And let’s get that blood hung up.” 

Lindsey counts it down. She pulls her hand back. The other intern replaces her with a splatter of blood across the front of her gown and a straight face. 

Alex nods.

“Okay. Let’s save a life.” Alex holds a hand out for the needle and thread she’ll need to patch up the hole in this kid’s heart once they get the bullet out. When she looks up again, Lindsey Horan is still in her OR.

“Your work is done here. Don’t you have an ER shift to finish?”

Lindsey’s good hand curls into a loose fist. She knocks it against her thigh. “I think there’s a great learning opportunity here.” 

Alex can tell she’s barely containing her anger. It’s written all over her face in red splotches. “There is,” she agrees with a nod. “For your friend here. I wouldn’t need more than one intern even if you _ weren’t _ sidelined. Go.”

Lindsey goes. 

She takes off her dirty glove. She walks calmly through the corridor and out of the surgical wing.

She ends up in the peds intern on-call room which is blissfully empty. Lindsey grabs the pillow from the bottom bunk and hurls it at the wall. She does the same with the one on the top bunk. One of the interns has left a notebook on the lower bunk and Lindsey throws that at the wall, too. This one makes a satisfying _ smack _ as it hits the wall. 

Then she slides down to sit with her back against the wall and presses the heels of her hands against her eyes. There’s pressure there, like she wants to cry but can’t. 

She’s cried over Emily but she can’t cry over possibly fucking up her career. This is all so backwards.

She doesn’t even hear the door open. She feels Emily’s warm arms around her and the warmth of her breath as she whispers _ something _ into her ear but she doesn’t know what Emily’s saying. She doesn’t know much of anything except that she folds herself into Emily’s warmth and grips tightly to the front of her scrub top and hides her face in the crook of her neck.

And Emily lets her. She sits next to her on the dirty on-call room floor and rocks her gently back and forth and talks to her about God knows what for minutes or hours until the pulsing in Lindsey’s head starts to fade.

Then Lindsey’s pager goes off and they both have to go back to reality.

-  
They’re in the OR for almost five hours.

Rose’s knees kind of ache and her contacts are sticking to her eyeballs because she was supposed to be off shift two hours ago but there is no way she’s leaving now. 

Alex Morgan has removed a bullet lodged in a kid’s heart, patched the hole, and is working on grafting part of her aorta back together. It’s been a lot of keeping her hand in one place, but it’s been fascinating to watch. 

Alex is precise in every movement she makes and she knows exactly what movements she wants the _ rest _ of the surgical team to make, so Rose has been zeroed in on her voice for the last four hours. 

“You want to do the staples?”

Rose stares at her. “What?”

“We’re done here. You have to know how to use the stapler by now. It’s October.”

“No. I mean, _ yeah _ but what about the aorta?”

“We grafted it. Well, _ I _grafted it. You held a retractor for me.” 

Rose peers into Kacey’s chest and marvels at the way the silk and mesh blends in with the vessel. Her heart is beating steadily despite the patch. 

“You fixed her.” 

“Well, yeah. It’s kind of my job.” Alex is already pulling her gown off. It’s _ hot _. 

As she waits for the intern to finish up, she realizes something. “What’s your name, anyway?”

“Rose,” says Rose. When Alex doesn’t do anything except raise one eyebrow, she corrects herself. “Dr. Rose Lavelle, ma’am.”

Alex wrinkles her nose. “Nice working with you, Dr. Lavelle. You’ll do the op note?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Good.”

-  
Emily goes to check on Kacey after the surgery and immediately wishes she hadn’t. When she reaches the peds floor, she sees that Alex is already in Kacey’s room with Rose. That’s not weird. Surgeons are generally kind of bad at bedside manner, but they _ do _ tend to stop by and update the patient and their family after the fact.

The weird thing is that Alex disappears into the peds attendings’ lounge as soon as she leaves the room. 

There’s only one pediatrics attending in house at any given time. 

Emily doesn’t have time to decide how she feels about it before Rose is all up in her space.

“Dude,” Rose says as she approaches. “Alex Morgan is a fucking genius.”

Emily stares at her. Rose holds up her hands. “I know she fucked you over but her technique? It’s perfect. I think I’m a little bit in love with her.”

“If you hook up with her maybe she’ll leave my wife alone.”

Rose winces. “Am I supposed to take sides here? Because you’re great but you can’t teach me how to patch a hole in somebody’s heart.”

Emily shakes her head and sidesteps Rose to get to the patient’s room. “I’m not asking anybody to take sides here. Lindsey did that by herself.”

Tucking her hands into her pockets, Rose tips her head slightly. “We were talking about Lindsey?”

Emily’s glad that her back is to Rose now because she knows there’s color on her cheeks. Her shoulders hunch reflexively. “I’m just saying that nobody asked her to punch anybody.”

“No,” Rose agrees. “But it was kind of hot.”

Emily really can’t argue with her. She ducks into Kacey’s room so she doesn’t have to try.

-  
Normally they have a dog walker stop by twice during the day because they work such long hours, but because Lindsey’s ER shifts are shorter that’s not really necessary. She gets home a little after five with plans to change her clothes and then take Bagel for a walk.

The thing is, Bagel isn’t at the door when Lindsey gets home. She’s _ always _ there. 

“Bagel?” Lindsey calls tentatively into the hallway as she kicks off her sneakers and shrugs out of her jacket. She waits for the telltale sound of nails clicking on the hardwood floors or the little, huffy breaths Bagel makes when she’s excited but neither of those things come. “Bag?” 

She tries to keep her voice steady but it shakes more the further she gets into the house. “Bagel, where are you?” 

Bagel isn’t in the living room laying in the patch of sun in there. She’s not in the kitchen begging for food. She’s not even on Lindsey’s bed, which she’s not allowed on but uses whenever she’s not home anyway. 

The cabinet under the sink is ajar, the childproof locks they’d installed hanging limply from one side. Lindsey’s heart begins to pound.

Lindsey finds her laying on her side under the dining room table, tongue lolling and eyes rolled back. She drops to her knees at her side immediately. 

“Bagel?” 

She tries to wag her tail but it’s like it’s too heavy for her. She whines. 

Lindsey shakily strokes the dog’s head while she Googles emergency vets open after five. She clicks on the closest one without looking and plugs it into her Maps app, wraps Bagel in a blanket, and carries her out to the car.

“Hang in there, girl. I’ve got you.”

-  
The vet’s office is on the first floor of the doctor’s home, so it kind of feels like she’s interrupting something when she barges into a comfortably lit living room. There’s a little reception desk in the entryway but it’s empty, so Lindsey just follows the voice until she spots a blonde woman in scrubs talking to a cat while its owner holds tightly to its carrier.

“Excuse me.” Lindsey is breathless. Bagel is wrapped up in her blanket in her shaking arms. It’s not like Bagel is heavy. She’s still a puppy. “Can you help my dog?” 

When the vet straightens up, Lindsey almost passes out. Of all the weird things that have happened today, mistaking her dog’s veterinarian for her ex tops that list. Her hair is a little curlier than Emily’s but there’s no mistaking that messy bun or crooked smile. Lindsey blinks a few times as the woman in scrubs approaches, brows knitting together in a way that’s just so _ Emily _ it almost knocks her right on her ass.

“Who’s this sweet girl?” The vet wonders, reaching out to scratch Bagel’s head. She whimpers pathetically.

Lindsey notices the embroidery on the doctor’s scrub top does, in fact, say _ Dr. Sonnett. _Has she entered a parallel universe?

“Ma’am?”

That is what snaps Lindsey out of it. Emily calls everyone that appears slightly older than them _ ma’am _ . When Lindsey teased her about it, she’d just shrugged and said _ my mama raised me right Miss Lindsey _. 

“Lindsey,” says Lindsey and she doesn’t think she’s imagining it when something thoughtful passes through the other Dr. Sonnett’s eyes. “And this is Bagel. I was at work all day and when I got home to take her out she was like this.” She lifts Bagel in her arms helplessly instead of explaining further.

“I’m Dr. Sonnett, but you can just call me Emma.” 

Lindsey tries desperately to remember if Emily had mentioned having a sister that looked so much like her they could have been twins. They’d talked about a lot of things but she doesn’t remember any _Emma_. It seems a little cruel to call twins _Emma_ _and Emily_, but she guesses, that way, her parents could just shout _Em_ and never be wrong. 

“Why don’t we take Bagel in the back and figure out what’s going on, okay Miss Lindsey?”

Right then she knows she’s talking to Emily’s sister.

It’s weird.

It’s also slightly comforting. She’d trust Emily with her kids if she ever had them so it seems like a good idea to trust Emma Sonnett with her fur baby.

-  
**L:** is your sister a vet?  
**E: ** howd u no i even had a sister  
**L: ** bagel’s sick. took her to the first vet i found.  
**E:** is everything okay?  
**E:** are _ you _ okay?  
**E:** do you want company?  
**L: ** i don’t know.  
**E: ** to which question?  
**L: ** ...all of them?  
  
**-** **  
**It’s not that Emily never visits her sister at work. Sometimes she visits just to get her animal fix. Kelley always said they were too busy for a dog while they were both in residency but Emily has been wanting one since college. Being able to pop into her sister’s office and pet some dogs was always a bonus to living in Portland. 

But she’s not here tonight for Emma.

When she walks into the makeshift waiting room, Emily finds Lindsey hunched over on the couch with her head in her hands. She’s still wearing scrubs from work and her hair has all kinds of flyaways that Emily’s fingers itch to push out of her face.

Instead, she plops down heavily beside her and shows her a video of a short, stocky puppy with ears too big for his body. Lindsey stiffens immediately when she feels the couch dip but when she realizes that it’s her, she leans her shoulder into Emily’s and swipes at her eyes with the back of her hand.

On the screen, the little dog tears across the hallway carpet, past where his human is waiting, and then turns around to sprint the completely opposite direction. He overshoots the apartment door again and the guy behind the camera chuckles. 

“Who’s that?”

“A dog I want to get,” Emily replies with a shrug. “He’s funny, right?”

“You’re getting a dog?” There’s something off about Lindsey’s tone. Like she’s confused or worried or both. 

Emily shrugs again. “Maybe. I want one. And Kelley doesn’t work as much as we do. Attending hours and all.” 

Lindsey’s shoulders slump and Emily wishes she hadn’t broken that unspoken rule about talking about Kelley. She looks so small with her shoulders hunched and her legs drawn up onto the couch. It’s like she’s trying not to take up so much space. 

“Plus they saw dogs are like their owners, right? Don’t you see the resemblance?” She shows Lindsey a picture of the puppy with an avocado toast squeaky toy. It earns her a small smile. She flicks to another one of the dog sprawled out on the floor with his legs splayed out behind him. 

“You _ do _ sleep like that.”

“Only when I’m not sleeping with somebody.” 

Lindsey knows that. She knows that because they shared a bed. But now Emily is sharing a bed with her wife and is thinking about getting a dog with her. That’s like a step away from having kids. 

“Hey, if you guys are looking for a dog-”

“Lindsey?” 

Lindsey doesn’t finish her thought. She stands up when Emma enters the room and Emily jumps up quickly, too. Her sister looks at her for a half a second and they have an entire conversation during that beat.

_ This is her? _

_ Yep. _

_ She’s cute. _

_ Yep. _

_ You’re an idiot. _

_ I know. _

Emma’s not looking at her anymore. She’s looking at Lindsey. “So I think Bagel got into some household cleaners. She started throwing up on her own back there and we gave her some medicine to help her get the rest of it out.” 

For some reason, Lindsey reaches for Emily’s hand. Emily lets her hold it. Emma ignores it. 

“Do you guys wanna see her?”

“She’s okay?” Lindsey sounds like a little kid. Her bottom lip trembles. Emily wants to give her a hug. She settles for squeezing her hand instead.

Emma smiles not unkindly. “She will be. I have her hooked up to an IV just to get some fluids back into her and I’d like to keep her overnight just for observation, but the most important thing is locking up all that stuff under the sink so she doesn’t get into it again. Puppies like to chew. They’re like kids but harder to deal with because they can’t talk.”

“Babies can’t talk, either,” Emily points out as they walk to the back of the office.

Bagel is laying on an exam table with part of her front leg shaved and an IV pumping fluid but she lifts her head as soon as they approach and wags her tail a little. 

Lindsey drops Emily’s hand to go to her and cradles the dogs head between her palms. “Oh my God I’m so sorry Bagel. I’m so so sorry, baby. I’m glad you’re okay and you’re gonna have the best dinner when you get out of here. I’ll make Mal cook. Don’t worry.” 

Emily hangs back and absentmindedly strokes Bagel’s back even though she kind of wants to rub Lindsey’s instead. 

Emma notices this, too.

“I didn’t know you were still seeing her.”

“I’m not.”

“Are you sure?”

“Shut up.”

-  
By the time Emily gets home, she’s been out for almost sixteen hours. Her back and feet ache and she’s got a nagging headache that she thinks she’s going to fix with a beer. When she goes into the kitchen, though, she finds Kelley. She would look soft and ready for bed in comfy sweats and a loose bun if it wasn’t for the tight cross of her arms and furrowed brow. 

“Hey,” Emily says, drawing out the word to prolong the inevitable. “Sorry I’m late.”

Kelley doesn’t say anything at first. She just quirks a brow at her and pushes off of the kitchen counter to stand up to her full height. Emily’s still taller than she is but it doesn’t feel like it. Not when Kelley’s giving her _ that _ look. 

She’s only been on the receiving end of that expression twice in her life. The first time had been when she forgot Kelley’s birthday. The second time had been when she’d brought a foster kitten into their shared apartment and Kelley had complained about being a dog person until the kitten chose her as its person. 

“Nice of you to show up,” she says when she finally determines that Emily isn’t going to talk. 

Emily inclines her head, leans back against the counter, and purses her lips while she tries to remember what she’s done to fuck up this time. Kelley might have made the biggest mistake in their marriage but ever since she showed up in Portland, Emily has been making a series of smaller ones that probably adds up to about the same damage. 

When Kelley laughs, dry and hollow, Emily knows she’s in trouble. She feels it in the way her stomach twists. She loved Kelley’s laugh. She still loves Kelley’s laugh, actually, but only her real, full-belly laugh that’s been so rare since Alex. 

“Did you know,” Kelley says, taking a step with each word out of her mouth. “That I sat at the restaurant for an hour hoping that you’d just gotten caught up with work and that you’d be there? The waiter kept asking if I wanted to order. It was _ embarrassing, _Emily.”

Emily recoils a little bit. The color fades from her face. She presses her palm to her forehead. “Oh my God, Kel, I just- I forgot.” 

It’s no excuse. Kelley clearly doesn’t believe her anyway. She scoffs and steps closer, into Emily’s personal space, and brackets her in against the counter by placing her hands upon it. If Kelley leaned in a little bit, they’d be touching, but she’s being really careful about _ not _ doing that. 

She’s not pissed. The fire isn’t there in her eyes. There’s just hurt, which is almost worse. 

“Emma posted on Insta. How is Lindsey’s dog?”

Emily opens her mouth but for once can’t find the words. She closes it again and worries her bottom lip between her teeth. It doesn’t even count. It’s not a _ real _ anniversary. Emily doesn’t even really think they have one of those, but if she _ had _ to acknowledge one, it’d be their wedding anniversary. They’ve been married this whole time. No one signed any papers. It was the anniversary of their first date and they’d been separated in between. 

It doesn’t count to Emily but it obviously still does to Kelley who looks...disappointed with her sad eyes and downturned lips. 

Emily does the only thing she can think to do. She kisses her.

Kelley sighs into her mouth like she’s going to pull back and away from her. Her entire body is stiff. But then her shoulders slump a little bit and she presses her weight into her palms on the counter and Emily’s fingers curl a little bit into the soft t-shirt Kelley’s wearing. 

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs against Kelley’s mouth. She means it. For bailing on their date. For sneaking around with Lindsey even though they’re still married. For falling in love with somebody else before she could fall completely out of love with Kelley. 

Kelley breaks the kiss. Their eyes meet while she wets her lips with her tongue.

“Prove it.”

Emily does. 

-  
“Are you sure about this?” Mal asks for the tenth time. She’s in the passenger seat with Bagel draped across her lap. Bagel has her front paws on the armrest and is trying to fit her head through a small crack in the open window.

“Positive,” Lindsey says even though her voice is raspy and her knuckles are white. It’s the right thing to do.

“Make a right turn onto Dogwood Drive,” Siri says helpfully. Lindsey does. “Your destination is on the left!”

“See, Bagel,” Lindsey says as she pulls into the driveway. “It’s even named after you.” 

Bagel barks happily at her. She feels kind of bad because she has no idea what’s coming. 

She climbs out of the car. Mal reluctantly follows, holding Bagel loosely by the leash. The dog notices people on the front porch before Lindsey does and starts barrelling towards them. Emily laughs loudly and Lindsey wonders what life would be like if Kelley stayed in Virginia. 

But Kelley is there, too, and she greets Bagel as she reaches the steps. She crouches down to pet her and Bagel snaps at her. Lindsey has to bite back a laugh.

“Whoa. Feisty, huh?”

“Like her mom,” Emily says with a grin. When Bagel noties her, she abandons trying to attack Kelley’s shoes in favor of pressing into Emily’s side. When _ Emily _ leans down to pet her, Bagel just licks her face. 

Tucking her hands into her pockets, Lindsey stands about a yard from the front porch. Emily stands on it, shoulder-to-shoulder with Kelley and with Bagel in her arms. 

“Thanks for doing this, you guys.”

“It’s not a problem,” Kelley replies with a flick of the hand. 

“Yeah. We’re dog people. And like I said, Kel’s got loads of free time now.” 

“Oh yeah.” Kelley rolls her eyes. Lindsey kind of wants to punch her. “I’m rolling in it.” 

“Well.” Mal breaks the awkward silence and grabs Lindsey’s keys. “We better go.” 

Lindsey turns to do that but Emily calls after her. “Aren’t you going to say goodbye?” 

She turns back around. She closes the distance between them and puts one foot on the bottom step while Emily leans down with Bagel. She presses a kiss to the top of the dog’s head and scratches behind her ear. Their hands touch and static electricity passes between them.

“Bye, baby. I’ll see you around.”

She’s not talking to just Bagel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so how are we feeling? the goal is to try and keep up with this one a bit more, but don't be surprised if you see a oneshot or two before the next chapter.
> 
> you can request me at cornerkix_ on twitter if you need a more direct way to yell at me.


	9. piece of my heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> don't get used to this, guys.
> 
> i just started writing this one directly after the previous and it came to be pretty quickly (by my standards).
> 
> enjoy!

It’s kind of like having a kid which is probably why it’s not working out very well.

One of the biggest arguments she and Kelley have _ever_ had was because Emily knew she wanted a big family and Kelley didn’t want kids at all. It had gone from a casual discussion to a screaming match in seconds and ended when Kelley had pointed out that she has to deal with sick kids at work all day and the idea of _ever_ seeing her own children suffer that way ate her up inside.

In retrospect, it should have been talked about before their wedding in Georgia but hindsight is 20/20. 

“Get your baby,” Kelley grunts from beside her, rolling over and pulling the pillow over her head. 

Emily shifts onto her side and squints at the clock on the bedside table which blinks 4:07 back at her. “I have to be at work at 5:30,” Emily says. 

Kelley hums sympathetically but otherwise says nothing. It’s not really that unfair. After all, it had been Emily’s idea to take Bagel off of Lindsey and Mal’s hands and Kelley had only really gone along with it because Emily had pouted a little bit when she’d asked. 

It’s a little weird, probably, for her and her wife to be taking care of her ex-girlfriend’s dog. 

So Emily pushes off the covers and gets out of bed, wincing as her bare feet hit the hardwood floor. She shuffles down the hallway and into the living room where Bagel is standing in the center of the floor howling. 

“What’s wrong, Bitty?” Emily asks. The dog, predictably, doesn’t answer her. She does sit down and stop making noise, though. That seems like a win. 

“Okay then.”

When Emily turns to go back to bed, Bagel starts barking. She hears Kelley groan from their bedroom and turns back around. 

“What?”

Bagel wags her tail. Emily sighs. She flops heavily onto the couch and Bagel jumps up with her even though they’d decided not to let her on the furniture. She props her head in Emily’s lap and Emily flicks on the TV.

She’s quiet now. She just wants company.

Emily can relate.

-  
The first patient of Lindsey’s day is vaguely familiar.

When she walks into the exam room, she’s struck with deja vu but she can’t quite place the man sitting in front of her. He’s tall with messy hair and a beard and she can’t place him for the life of her. “Mr…” She looks down at the chart in her hands. “Swanson?”

“The one and only,” Mr. Swanson says. “Friends call me Dansby.”

“Do you always make friends with your doctors?”

Dansby shrugs. “The cute ones.” Lindsey wrinkles her nose at him and he laughs. “Okay it’s no biggie. Is Dr. Heath around? Or maybe Dr. Pugh?” 

Lindsey turns the question over in her head. Why does this guy know Tobin and Mal? Why doesn’t _ she _ remember him? “What brings you in today, Dansby?”

“I’m in heart failure,” he says matter-of-factly. 

Lindsey stares at him. He stares right back unblinkingly and props himself up a bit more on his pillows. “I’ve been through this before Dr…”

“Horan,” Lindsey supplies.

“Dr. Horan. I had viral cardiomyopathy a while ago and I have episodes on and off since. I’m on Lisinopril, Lasix, and a beta blocker already. Usually they do an IV diuretic and see if I moved up the transplant list. I’ll probably need a night or two. It’s not really at drowning level yet.”

He sounds like he’s reciting from a book. Lindsey wonders just how many times Dansby Swanson has been admitted to the hospital. 

Well, if there’s one thing she learned in medical school it was that the patient knows their body best. She discards the chart and goes to listen to him instead. “Couple deep breaths for me, Dansby.” She doesn’t even have to tell him that. As soon as her stethoscope hits his back he’s taking deep, measured breaths. 

It sounds like it’s difficult for him to do it. There’s a gurgling noise when she gets to the bases of his lungs. It’s no wonder he feels like he’s drowning. He literally is. There’s water in his lungs and they have to get it out. 

“Breathe normal,” she says while she places the bell of her stethoscope on Dansby’s chest. She frowns slightly. 

“What?” He asks when she pulls the earpieces out. 

“Have you always had a heart murmur?”

Dansby’s eyebrows raise. “Nope. I had one for a while after the virus but it went away when I got better. Is that bad? That _ sounds _ bad.”

Lindsey shakes her head. “I’m gonna get you set up with your IV Lasix and get a new Echo just to see what’s going on in there. You’re gonna be here a little while.”

“So no pickup baseball tonight, huh?”

“Nope. Sorry.”

“Damn.”

“Is there somebody you’d like me to call? Friends or family?” 

A wry smile curls his lips. “Are you trying to ask me if I have a girlfriend or something? Because the answer’s no.” 

Lindsey feels her face get hot but she just shakes her head again. She’s not asking for herself. She’s just now remembered that Mal thought this guy was really cute the last time he’d been on their service. “It’s hospital protocol.”

“Nah. I don’t talk to my parents and...actually, could you do me a favor?”

Lindsey’s wary. “Depends what it is.”

“Can you let Tobin and Mal know I’m here? I think they’d like to know.” When Lindsey doesn’t answer right away, Dansby backtracks. “I mean Dr. Heath and Dr. Pugh. Sorry. We’re kind of friends. First-name basis. Maybe you and I could get there someday if you’re nice to me.”

“You’re not gonna see me again,” Lindsey says, waving with her casted hand. “Unless something bad happens. Which reminds me, if something _ does _ happen, do you want us to do everything we can to bring you back?” 

It’s a formality, really. Dansby’s barely thirty. Lindsey has already almost checked the _ full code _ box when he shakes his head. 

“What?”

“I don’t wanna live on a machine. And if it’s my time it’s my time.”

Lindsey sets her pen down. “You know you’re towards the top of the list, right? You just have to wait until you get your new heart and then things will get better.”

Dansby smiles at her but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’ve been on that list for three years now and I’ve come to this hospital twice only to be told the heart for me was given to somebody sicker or it wasn’t good enough to use. If it’s my time, it’s my time.”

Lindsey doesn’t _ get _ that. 

But she marks down Dansby’s wishes in his chart anyway.

-  
Christen looks absolutely wiped out when Emily shows up for her shift with a decaf tea for her. “Dude,” Emily says as she slides the cup across the counter towards her. “You look like shit. Was it that bad?” She glances around. “Where’s Cait?”

“There’s just this patient here who’s a frequent flyer of mine. She’s really sick and I don’t think her dad gets it.” 

Emily leans against the counter and props her chin on her hands. “What’s wrong with her? Is it the c-word?”

Christen shakes her head. “No. I almost think it’d be easier to accept if it _ was. _”

“What is it, then?”

“He’s got-”

Suddenly, the blue light outside of a patient room at the end of the hallway starts flashing. Overhead, someone announces _ Rapid response, room 326! Rapid response, room 326! _

Even though Christen was seconds away from the end of her shift, she forces herself to her feet and runs down the corridor, Emily hot on her heels. 

There’s a little boy who can’t be more than six years old laying in a bed that’s too big for him. He has oxygen tubing in his nose, a wool knit cap on his head even though it’s fifty degrees outside, and he is so pale his skin looks paper-thin. His lips are blue around the edges and he’s gasping for breath. 

Caitlin hovers uncertainly at his bedside. “What’s going on?” Christen demands even though her voice keeps its usual calm tone. The boy’s father is still in the room looking panicked in the corner. “Dr. Foord, what happened in here?”

While Cait is busy stumbling over her words Christen is placing a gentle hand on the boy’s arm. “Is it hard to breathe, Simon?” He nods with wide eyes. “Okay. Let’s just try something. Cait, go get an intubation tray just in case, please? Emily, can you get on his other side?”

They both scramble to follow Christen’s direction. “We’re just gonna raise your bed a little bit and see if that helps your breathing okay Si? On three.”

Emily pops up on Simon’s other side. “Please keep your arms and legs inside the ride at all times!” She presses the button on the side of the bed and Simon’s bed lifts towards the ceiling. Emily feels like she’s holding her breath, too, waiting to see if Christen’s idea works.

Christen slips a monitor onto Simon’s finger. His breathing seems to be settling a bit. His color improves a little bit. He stops gasping like a fish. 

“96%,” Christen says and Emily holds her hand out for a high-five. Simon slaps her palm lightly and she doubles over like he might have broken her hand. It makes the kid laugh which is all Emily really cares about.

“Is he gonna be okay?” Simon’s dad asks from the corner, his voice quivering. 

Emily is about to say he’s fine when Christen gestures to the hallway. “Why don’t we talk, Ben?” He sighs heavily but follows her out. Emily hesitates and then decides that someone should probably stay with Simon. 

She spins her chair around and plops onto it. “Rock, paper, scissors to decide what we watch?”

He looks skeptical. She sticks her hand out for him to shake instead. “I’m Dr. Sonnett, but most people just call me Sonny. I’m gonna help take care of you today.”

“Is Chris leaving?” His voice is so soft Emily has to strain to hear him. She can actually hear Christen’s conversation with Ben more clearly even though she kind of wishes she can’t.

“She’s got to go home and sleep, I think, but she’ll be back tonight.”

“Oh.”

“Do you like movies? Videogames? We can do whatever you want.”

“I want to go home.”

Emily’s heart breaks a little bit. That’s one thing she _ can’t _ do.   
-

“Mr. Sanders, you understand that Simon’s condition is serious. Most children with Tay-Sachs don’t see their fourth birthdays. He’s done pretty well for himself.” 

“Are you saying I should just..._ give up _ on my son?”

“That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying we may have done all we can for him if the seizures keep happening.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

“I am?”

“Y_ ou _have done everything you can do but there’s a doctor in Mexico doing experimental treatments. Here, look.”

“Mr. Sanders, this is one very small study and it’s not even available-”

“Which is why I’m going to take Si to Mexico as soon as I can come up with the money.”

“Ben, don’t you think you should be spending the time Simon has left..._ with Simon _?”

“I told him when he turns seven we’re going to Disney World. I can’t let him down.”  
-

Mal walks into the room without stopping to look at the new admission’s chart. She spots the back of Lindsey’s head and just goes for it. “Hey! What have you got for me today? I hope it’s something fun.” 

“I’ll let you be the judge of that,” Lindsey says.

At the same time, Dansby says “Miss me?”

Without really meaning to, Mal smiles broadly. She rocks forward a little bit on her toes. If Lindsey wasn’t in the room, she might have hugged him which is weird. It’s weird, right? She’d only been his doctor for a day and, yeah, he’d made her laugh but…

It’s like the first thing you learn in medical school: don’t get involved with patients. It’s a conflict of interest or something. Besides, it’s hard to focus on proper treatment plans if you care too much about the patient.

But it’s just a silly crush. Mal’s had hundreds of those before including a really embarrassing one on her anatomy TA. She’ll get over it.

“Hey...you!” She replies, acting like she doesn’t remember his name at all. His grin falters just slightly.

“You remember Dansby. Right, Mal?” Lindsey is giving her a look over Dansby’s head that screams _ you’re full of shit! _ Mal has to hide her laughter.

“Oh right. Dansby. Baseball guy.”

“That’s me! Do you want to put in my chest tube? Dr. Horan was gonna do it but she only has one hand.”

Mal glances at Lindsey who just waves at her with her good hand. “I bet him I could do it anyway but it made him nervous.”

“Listen, we just met!”

“Sure, Dansby. I see how it is.”

“I got it.” 

Lindsey helps her set up the sterile field and opens the kit for her while Mal gowns and gloves. Dansby whistles as he looks at the needles and scalpel. 

“How does this work again?” He asks while Lindsey puts a paper drape over him. There’s a hole on the left side so Mal will be able to work. 

“So what Dr. Pugh’s gonna do is numb you up with some local anesthetic. Then she’ll make a small cut with the scalpel so she can insert the tube. It’s still gonna hurt like a bitch, though, because we can’t numb the pleura.”

When Dansby gives her a look that says he has no idea what the hell she’s talking about, Mal explains. “The pleura is the membrane that surrounds the lungs. There are a bunch of nerves in there we can’t numb with local. Sorry.”

“Ready?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be. Count down the needle, though.”

Mal smirks at him. “I already did the numbing.” 

He looks down. There’s a small trickle of blood but otherwise nothing. “I didn’t even feel that.”

“Told you she was good,” says Lindsey. 

“You might wanna look away for this part,” Mal warns him. Dansby does. She makes the cut and readies the tube, pushing it far enough to get between the membranes but not poke the lung itself. Dansby hisses and takes a deep breath in through his nose. His hand flings out and Lindsey takes it without thinking.

Mal looks at her. She shrugs. “You can squeeze this one but try not to break it. It’s the only one I have left.” Dansby does squeeze her hand pretty hard but not hard enough to cause any damage. 

Mal hears the satisfying rush of air out of the tube when she hooks it up to the machine and then tapes it down. 

“That hurt like a bitch.”

“Hey. Don’t call my friend a bitch,” Lindsey jokes as she starts cleaning the supplies away.

Dansby looks right at Mal. “I’d never say that.”

Lindsey thinks she believes him.

-

Emily is starving.

She ditches the cafeteria food in favor of getting street tacos from the food truck that parks outside of the emergency room instead. When she gets in line, she sees a very familiar messy blonde bun at the front of the line. She considers bailing in favor of the sandwich truck on the other side of the hospital but Lindsey chooses that exact moment to toss a look over her shoulder. She turns back around quickly but Emily sees the way her spine stiffens from here.

She distracts herself by checking Instagram and mindlessly likes a video of her sister’s dog and a few doctor memes as the line moves slowly. When she gets to the front of the line to order, the woman hands her a hot to-go container before she can even get all of the words out. 

“What’s this?” Emily asks as she pops the lid open. Three chicken tacos, just how she would order them, are inside. 

“Someone got you earlier. Said they were returning a favor.”

Emily blinks at her. 

She leaves a twenty dollar tip.

-

It’s raining because it’s Portland so Emily can’t sit at her favorite picnic table in the back of the hospital. She’s forced into the cafeteria instead. 

As she hovers uncertainly in the entrance clutching her to-go container, she thinks of the cafeteria scene in mean girls. The surgery residents are definitely varsity jocks. If that’s true, she guesses the peds residents are more like the art freaks. 

(Alex Morgan is some kind of unfriendly hottie and that probably makes Tobin and Christen the greatest people you will ever meet.

Kelley doesn’t even go here. Except she does now.)

Before Emily can overthink it, her legs carry her towards the surgery interns’ table. Lindsey isn’t there yet and neither is Russell so it seems like a safe enough place to land. She turns her chair around before settling into it and is two bites into a taco before she greets Rose and Mal with a “‘sup?”

Mal smiles warmly at her. Rose asks if she’s going to eat all of her tacos while she pokes at what’s supposed to be lasagna on her tray. It almost feels normal until Lindsey shows up, pauses three steps away from their table, and clutches her tray with a vice like grip. Her knuckles are white and her lips are pursed.

Emily pushes her chair out from the table and starts to stand up just as Lindsey slides into the one available chair at the table next to her. 

“...what are you doing?”

Emily’s tongue feels like sandpaper in her mouth while she sputters out “I...I was just gonna go get a drink. You want one? You got my food so I owe you.”

“Didn’t Maria tell you? That was for coming with me and Bagel to the vet.” Across from them, Mal and Rose exchange bemused glances. 

“No. I mean yeah, she did, but I can afford a dollar soda.”

Lindsey acquiesces with a shrug. “Diet?”

“Like you need it,” Emily replies with an eyeroll before skittering off to the refrigerator to get their drinks. 

Rose leans across the table as soon as Emily’s out of earshot. “What the fuck was that?”

Lindsey takes a bite of burrito. She chews slowly. She takes another bite. A vein in Rose’s forehead threatens to burst. 

“What was what?”

“Sonnett jumped up like her ass was burned and you looked two seconds away from bailing,” Rose says.

“You guys aren’t really friends are you?” Mal asks simultaneously. 

Lindsey reaches for the gold chain around her neck just for something to do with her hand that isn’t tearing up a napkin. “Sonny and I are fine.”

“Are you sure?” Rose asks with eyebrows raised. “Because-” Mal shushes her because Emily is sauntering back with Lindsey’s soda, a bottle of water, and a slice of chocolate cake. She dumps her prizes onto the table. 

“Couldn’t resist,” she says by way of explanation, reaching for the cake as soon as she sits back down. 

“Are you done with those, then?” Rose wonders, reaching across the table for the remaining tacos in front of Emily. Emily prods her hand with her fork. 

“No. I just like my dessert first.”

Lindsey thinks she must be imagining the way Emily looks at her when she says that. She goes back to her burrito. 

“So,” Mal says to break the silence that has settled upon the group. “Did you guys watch last night’s _ Bachelor _ or…”

This sends the group into a ten-minute-long argument about which girls should have gotten eliminated. Emily actually _ does _ end up stabbing Rose with her fork for one of her opinions. 

“You can’t honestly tell me you think Hannah B. is a better choice than Taylor C. Like, she shouldn’t even be allowed back on the show after the shit she pulled.” Emily is so into this argument that she has her palms flat on the table and she’s half standing.

Rose is sitting with one leg drawn up onto her chair and is twirling a french fry between two fingers. “I do. It’s _ funny _, Son. I don’t watch the show for love. I watch it for drama.”

“But the whole point is hopefully to find love. They’re all looking for their person. Everybody deserves to find the right one.” Emily’s voice has taken on a softer tone and Rose just shrugs. 

“Sure, but not in my reality TV.”

“Linds? Mal?”

Mal winces. “I mean, I believe in true love and even love-at-first sight everything…” She looks wistful for a second. Lindsey wonders why. “...but I don’t watch _ The Bachelor _ for that.”

Emily’s shoulders slump and she exhales on an exaggerated sigh before turning to her. Lindsey can’t stop thinking about how their thighs are touching right now.

“Linds?”

Lindsey, who’s been staring at the way a muscle in Emily’s jaw twitches whenever she gets passionate about something for the entire duration of this conversation, blushes. 

“...what?”

“Help me out here.” Emily’s eyes are boring right into Lindsey’s. Lindsey swallows thickly. 

“I don’t know…” Emily’s lips turn down in a pout. Lindsey can’t help the words that tumble out next. “I guess I like it when they end up happy and in love, too. Gives me hope.”

“You’re such a softie, Dr. Horan,” Rose teases her. “I’m telling Tobin. No, I’m telling Dr. Ellis.” 

“You wouldn’t.”

“Try me.”

“I hate you.”

“You d-” All at once, Mal and Rose’s pagers go off. They stand in unison. Rose gives them a mock salute. Mal offers Lindsey a sympathetic look. 

“Duty calls.”

They disappear quickly, leaving Emily and Lindsey awkwardly on the same side of the table. Lindsey picks at the label of her soda bottle. Emily swings her leg over the chair and goes to sit on the other side. Lindsey misses the way her leg was pressed against Emily’s under the table. 

The quiet between them is kind of awkward. It’s weird. Lindsey remembers when they could sit on opposite ends of the couch for hours without saying a word. Now, two minutes seems like too long to sit in silence. 

“So-”

“I was thinking-”

“You go.”

“No, you.”

“It’s not important.”

“Neither is mine. It was just too quiet.” 

Lindsey glances down at her empty plate and tries to hide a smile. It doesn’t work. Emily kicks her foot under the table. “Come on. Say it.” Lindsey shakes her head. “Say it and you can have the rest of my chocolate cake.”

“Like you wouldn’t give it to me anyway.”

Emily looks offended. “Well _ now _ I won’t.”

Lindsey looks up at Emily. Emily looks back. Lindsey looks away first. Emily makes a disappointed noise. 

“I was just gonna say that I miss going on runs with Bagel in the morning before work. Is…” Lindsey’s face changes. Emily wonders why before she continues. “Is Kelley taking her out instead? She’s got a lot of energy. If you don’t run her, she chews everything.”

“Kelley does most mornings. Sometimes I jog with her after work.” Lindsey nods. “Hey, if you want, you can pick her up a couple days a week and take her with you.”

Their eyes meet again. “Really?” One of Lindsey’s dimples pops out so Emily knows it’s a real smile. She smiles back.

“Course. As long as it’s not some ungodly hour it’ll be fine. Like divorced parents with shared custody.” 

The silence is back. It’s Emily’s turn to look down. 

Lindsey takes pity on her. “That’d be awesome, actually. Without her I haven’t even been going for runs at all and I can feel it.” She pats her stomach and Emily rolls her eyes.

“You still look hot.” Lindsey almost chokes on the bite of cake she’s just stolen. Emily is undeterred. “What? It’s an objective fact. Anybody would agree with me.”

“You can’t just say stuff like that, Em.”

Emily is looking around the cafeteria. She leans across the aisle towards a guy at the next table. “Hey. Can I ask you something?” He nods. “Do you think my friend over here is attractive? No pressure.” 

He looks vaguely uncomfortable but takes one look at Lindsey and says “Yeah, she’s beautiful.” 

Emily gives him a thumbs up. “See. You’re hot. Sorry about it.”

Lindsey opens her mouth to retort, but Emily’s pager goes off. She sighs and takes one last bite of cake before getting up. 

“Don’t think this means you don’t have to acknowledge that you’re attractive. This is just a pause. I’ll text you about Bagel, okay?”

“Okay.”

-

When they’re done with rounds, Christen and Caitlin head home while Emily, Hayley, and Kelley take over on the floors. Kelley is on her way downstairs for her second coffee of the day. Once they’re done with notes, Cait makes a beeline for the on-call room. She’d been up late the night before.

“Do you need a banana bag?” Emily jokes as her friend scurries down the hall. 

Cait flips her off as she disappears around the corner. 

Emily sits down at one of the computers behind the nurses’ station and begins flipping through imaging and test results for their patients, making notes on her rounding list as she goes. One of the nurse call buttons is beeping. She lets it go for a minute or two before turning around in her chair and realizing there’s no one back here. 

Michael and Charlotte are on but busy. Shrugging, Emily reaches over to flick the buzzer off and stands up to check on the kid. It’s one of hers anyway. 

When she reaches Simon’s room, she sees him sitting on the edge of his bed trying to do up his shoelaces. His hands are shaking so he can’t get the second loop and his cheeks are pink with frustration.

“Hey, dude,” Emily says as she approaches and bends down to get on eye-level with him. “Where are you going?”

“Mexico,” Simon replies simply. Emily stares at him. “My daddy says there are some good doctors there who will help me and-”

He can’t finish his sentence. Simon’s entire body goes stiff and then begins to shake. Emily springs into action immediately. She takes the sneakers from him and puts up the guard rails on his bed as his limbs jerk and shake. His eyes are wide and he tips onto his back while Emily reaches for the nurse call button.

Michael materializes out of nowhere. “Can you get me his usual dose of Keppra?” Michael nods and readies the meds. They have a seizure cart permanently parked in Simon’s room so it doesn’t take very long for him to get the dose into Simon’s IV.

Seconds later, the jerking stops. Emily gently rolls Simon onto his side and smooths his hair back from his face. There are sticky tear tracks down his cheeks and he’s trying to cover his lower half with his blanket. He’s ruined his pajamas.

“Hey Si. It’s okay. Let’s get you some new ones okay. Mike, what’ve we got?”

“Transformers, Power Rangers, and Paw Patrol. And Barbie, Frozen, and Doc McStuffins.”

Simon wipes his nose on his sleeve. “Power Rangers,” he decides in a trembling voice. Michael goes to find the fresh pajamas and once he’s dry and changed Emily hangs out in his room in the armchair usually reserved for parents. 

She hasn’t seen Simon’s dad since this morning when he’d gotten into it with Christen. The TV’s on playing some animated movie but Simon isn’t paying attention to it. He’s picking at his blanket and looking at the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling instead. 

“What’s wrong? Not a Teen Titans fan?” 

Simon shrugs but doesn’t say anything. 

“What’s up, Si?”

“I miss my dad.” Emily presses her fingers into her temples. She’s tried calling him twice already and got his voicemail both times. She bites her lip and stands. 

“Don’t go.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Emily assures him as she approaches the bed and holds out her arms. He looks skeptical. “You wanna sit with me? We can watch cartoons.” 

“Okay.” His voice is smaller than he is. Emily picks him up easily and goes to sit back down on the armchair. Simon settles in her lap and she begins to rock him slowly along with the catchy tune of a kids’ show theme song. 

He’s out like a light within five minutes. Emily just kicks off her sneakers and reaches for the remote. There’s probably a soccer game on she can watch somewhere.

-  
“I’m just saying.” Rose flops heavily onto the gurney beside Lindsey and steals a handful of her chips. “You’re still into her. It’s pretty obvious.”

Lindsey doesn’t look up from her laptop where she has Dansby’s echocardiogram pulled up. She’s not the best at reading these and there’s a worry-line forming in her forehead as she chews her lip. 

“Are you even listening to me? Can you trade calls with me Christmas Eve?”

“No,” Lindsey replies with a firm shake of her head. It’s the one holiday both her parents have off. 

“No what?” Rose prods, taking another handful of chips. 

“No to everything. I’ve moved on. You know that.”

Rose snorts. “I don’t think sleeping with half the hospital counts as _ moving on _, Linds. We can ask one of the psych residents. I bet they say you have unhealthy coping mechanisms. Maybe you should just-”

“Hey, Mal. What was that between you and Dansby earlier?”

Rose suddenly becomes way less interested in Lindsey’s love life -or sex life- and way more interested in Mal’s crush on her patient. Rose’s eyebrows are furrowed as she swivels in her seat to look at Mal instead. 

“You know that’s illegal, right?”

“What?” Mal is a little out of breath from running down the stairs to get to the basement. 

“Getting involved with a patient.”

Mal looks at Lindsey. “What did you tell her? Dansby and I aren’t a thing.”

“Neither are Sonnett and Lindsey,” Rose fires back. 

Lindsey cuts in. “Sonny and I aren’t a thing anymore…”

“But you were.”

“We’re not now.”

“And Dans and I aren’t anything. He’s just sweet. And funny. And a good listener.”

Lindsey and Rose share a look. Rose scoffs. “Careful, Mal. You’ll end up an ethics board question if you’re not paying attention.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be trying to get on Alex’s good side?” Mal rolls her eyes. “Don’t worry about me.”

“I always worry about you,” Rose grumbles. “And Alex likes me now. Ask her. She’ll tell you.”

“Why?” Lindsey wants to know. “Did you get her coffee this morning?” 

Rose ducks behind her cardiology textbook to hide her face. “With her credit card.”

“Did she let you get a treat, too, Rose?” Lindsey shakes her head. “Don’t let her intimidate you.”

“Well, _ I _ want to learn from her. I’m not gonna punch her.”

Lindsey decides to change the subject. “Will you look at this? I suck at reading these.” Rose scoots over to peer over her shoulder at the echo.

She whistles through her teeth. “How old is this person? Their heart’s barely pumping.”

Lindsey tries to cover the patient’s name with her thumb but Rose sees it anyway. “Dansby?”

Mal looks up from her book. Her face loses a little bit of color. Rose clears her throat. “Well, I think we can fix that. Obviously he needs a new heart but until then…” She sits back down next to Mal and they each take half of Rose’s cardiology textbook in their laps. 

“An LVAD could work, right?” Lindsey asks. “As a bridge?”

Rose holds up the book on that exact page. “Okay, fine, you _ are _ kind of a genius.”

-  
It’s not exactly the crack of dawn, but 7:30 on her day off is still pretty early. Kelley is still asleep but Emily sits outside a Starbucks nursing an iced drink with Bagel at her feet. The fact that she’s up so early today is proof she likes Lindsey a lot. Sleep is important to her. 

Bagel catches sight of her before Emily does. She springs to her feet and wags her tail so hard it whacks Emily in the legs. 

“Hey, Bagel!” 

Emily looks up to see Lindsey in a pair of shorts that show off a _ lot _ of leg and a tank top that proves that Lindsey must lift on days she doesn’t run. She’s still kind of drooling over Lindsey’s collarbones when she gets close enough to hear her.

“Hi, Son.”

“Hey.” Emily hopes her voice sounds normal. She can’t really tell over the way her heartbeat is in her ears. She hands Bagel’s leash over. “How long do you think you’ll be?”

“Probably half an hour? I’m not gonna go too far if she hasn’t been running every day.”

Emily’s mouth turns up. “You don’t think our dog can keep up with you?”

Lindsey tries not to think too hard about _ our dog _. She shrugs. “She was just in the hospital. I’ll work her back up to my seven miles.”

“_ Seven? _”

“Yeah. Sometimes I feel good enough to do ten.”

“So when were you going to tell me you’re actually Supergirl? Because I want your autograph.”

“Very funny. Do you have stuff to do? Because I can just bring her back later.”

Emily shakes her head and holds up her laptop. “I have clinic notes to finish so I’ll still be here.”

Lindsey looks surprised. Then she recovers. “Okay. I’ll see you soon, then.”

“See you soon, then.”

-  
Emily is not prepared.

When Lindsey and Bagel return just under half an hour later, she almost falls out of her chair. Bagel is panting but wagging her tail but that’s not what has Emily’s attention at all. She’s basically staring at Lindsey who has rolled her shorts up even further and whose sweaty tank top is clinging to her like a second skin. 

She’s a little breathless when she falls into the chair across from Emily. 

“Good run?” Emily manages to choke out. She’s proud that her voice doesn’t squeak. 

Lindsey nods. “Yeah but she’s faster than me still.”

“She has four legs. She’s supposed to be faster.”

“I guess so.” Lindsey has put Bagel’s leash under one of her chair legs. 

“Did you get your work done?”

“Mostly I listened to music but I got some done.”

“Cool.” Lindsey picks at her fingernails. Emily’s attention shifts to her hands and then abruptly away. Probably too quickly. Lindsey bites back a grin. “What’re you doing with your day off?”

“Oh I got big plans.” Lindsey leans towards her. “Grocery shopping. Laundry. Netflix. The important stuff. What about you?”

“Nothing. The only thing on my to-do list was that run.”

“Must be nice.” Emily is leaning in now, too. Their knees are kind of touching. Lindsey unwittingly looks at Emily’s mouth. If Emily notices, she doesn’t react. “Not having to do chores.”

“It’s just because it was Mal’s week to do the shopping and Rose lost a bet and is doing my laundry.”

“What was the bet?”

Lindsey rolls her eyes. “That Russell wouldn’t fuck up an ankle surgery he was assisting on.”

Emily tips her head. “Were you on the side of _ obviously he’s gonna fuck this up _?”

“Duh.” 

Throughout the discussion, they’ve both leaned in further and further. Their faces are mere inches away now. It’s Emily’s gaze that drops this time.

Emily’s phone rings. A country song blares from the speakers. Lindsey looks down to see a picture of Kelley smiling up at them. 

She pushes her chair back and away and stands up quickly. The movement dislodges Bagel from where she’s been dozing on one of Lindsey’s feet. “Sorry, Bitty.” She stoops down to give the dog a pat before thumbing over her shoulder. 

“I’m just gonna go.”

Emily has already silenced her phone. “You don’t have to.”

“Yeah, I do. You should talk to your wife.” 

She leaves. 

Emily takes the call on the last ring.

-  
“Dr. Sonnett?”

Emily looks up from her computer. Michael is one of the calmest nurses they have on the peds floor. He’s 6’3” and 250 pounds and he often kicks everyone’s ass in basketball outside of the hospital. Right now, though, he looks stricken. 

Emily locks the computer. “What’s up?”

Michael runs a hand through his hair. “Simon keeps asking for his dad.” 

Emily’s stomach lurches. She picks up the nearest phone and dials the number she’s basically memorized this week. She counts in her head as the dial tone rings out once, twice, six times. Then the voicemail picks up.

Emily’s already left three messages today. She hasn’t seen Simon’s dad since yesterday. She gets up from her chair, heads to Simon’s room and walks in without knocking. 

“Hey, Si.”

“Is my daddy here?” 

Emily bites her lip. The little boy looks so much younger than six. He’s all curled in on himself with his knees drawn up and his arms wrapped around them. He’s paler than he was even this morning and his lips are chapped and broken. The spark in his eye seems to have dulled. 

She crosses the room and folds herself into the bed beside Simon, protocol be damned. She opens her arms and the kid collapses against her. Emily wraps her arms around him and rocks his body gently while running a hand through his sweaty hair.

“Did I ever tell you about the time I met Batman?” Simon shakes his head and Emily starts talking, keeping her voice low as she recalls a costume party in college. She conveniently forgets to mention that part of the story and within minutes, Simon is dozing against her. 

The door creaks and Emily glances away from the television. Ben Sanders is there. He takes a look at his son cuddled up to Emily in his too-big hospital bed and then goes back to packing up all of Simon’s stuff. 

“Mr. Sanders?” Emily says tentatively. He doesn’t even look up. “Ben?” Still no response. It makes anger coil in Emily’s gut. She sits up quickly. 

Too quickly, because Simon stirs beside her. “Daddy?”

Whatever words Emily was about to spew die in her throat at the desperation in the boy’s tone. Ben turns around, then. Emily notices that he hasn’t shaved in days. There are deep purple circles under his eyes. He looks pale, too. 

“Hey, Si. Hey, buddy.” Ben is still shoving Simon’s clothes and toys into a backpack. “We’re going to go to Mexico and some doctors there are going to help you, okay?”

“Mr. Sanders, we’ve told you that those treatments are experimental-”

He ignores Emily completely. “And then after you’re all better we’ll go to Disneyland. Won’t that be fun, Si?”

Emily feels rather than sees Simon slump beside her. “Can we go tomorrow, Daddy?” Ben is halfway to explaining that they don’t really have time and that they need to get the medicine as soon as possible, but Simon just keeps talking. “I’m real tired. Wanna nap with me?” 

It looks like Simon is having trouble even keeping his eyes open. Emily wordlessly climbs out of bed. She makes her way across the room and rests her hand on Ben’s arm. 

“Be with him. He wants you to be with him. It’s time.” 

Tears well up in Ben’s eyes. Emily holds his gaze and wills herself not to cry by biting the inside of her cheek until she tastes iron. He nods and goes to his son. He takes Simon in his arms and rocks him.

Emily waits in the doorway for just a second. Then she turns to go finish her paperwork.

It’s not even an hour later that he passes. They code him for almost half an hour. Emily does the majority of the compressions herself. She feels the little boy’s ribs crack beneath her hands and looks across the room at his dad. He’s openly bawling, then. 

“Ben this stops when you say so.” He can’t seem to find the words around his sobs. “We have to keep going until you say stop but he’s gone, Ben.” 

It’s another ten minutes before he chokes out a broken _ stop _.

Emily pats Simon’s father on the shoulder as she leaves the room. She writes the code note. Then she walks to the bathroom and throws up.

-  
“Mr. Swanson?” 

“That’s my father. You can call me Dansby.” He sets down the newspaper he’s reading and tilts his head slightly. “I don’t know you and I have a lot of doctors.” He extends his hand for her to shake.

She does. She has a firm handshake. It makes Dansby’s lips twitch. “Dr. Morgan, cardiology.”

“I already have one of those,” Dansby replies with a headshake. “I don’t think I need another one.”

Alex offers him a tight-lipped smile. “I just do the consults the primary team puts in Mr...Dansby. Anyway, I’m here to talk to you about your echocardiogram results. That’s the one where-”

“I know what an echo is, Dr. Morgan. I’ve only had about a hundred of them.” 

Her smile shifts into something a little more genuine and Dansby grins back at her. “Okay well your left ventricular function was about 40% the last time you had one of these done. You know that normal is about 55%?”

Dansby nods. 

“Well you’re below 15% now.”

Dansby doesn’t react much except to fold his newspaper in half and then fourths and then eighths. He smooths the creases carefully as he talks. “That’s probably why I feel like shit, huh?”

“Probably.”

“Do you have a heart for me, Dr. Morgan?” He doesn’t even sound hopeful. Alex figures he’s been down this road before. 

“I have something else to offer you in the meantime. It’s called an LVAD.”

“That’s a lot more letters.”

“It’s a left-ventricular assistive device. Basically I’d go in and insert a pump so that your heart doesn’t overwork itself. It’d pump blood for you until you can get a new heart. It’s kind of a bridge to that surgery.” 

“What’s the catch?”

Alex frowns. “Who says there’s a catch?”

“Dr. Morgan.” He laughs at her. Alex decides she kind of likes this guy. “There’s _ always _ a catch.”

Alex weighs her options. She can’t really lie to him. “Well, you’d have to stay in the hospital until you get a heart.” Dansby immediately says no. “Without it I don’t know how long you have, Dansby. We can keep trying to flush the fluid out with meds but your heart just isn’t working. There’s no medicine to fix that.”

Dansby shrugs. “If it’s my time it’s my time.”

“Why don’t you sleep on it?”

“Do I have a choice?”

Alex smiles wanly. “You always have a choice. But you would be leaving against medical advice, yeah.” 

He drops his head back onto the pillow and starts unfolding his newspaper again, settling on the sports page. “You get one more night to convince me.” 

Alex doesn’t seem particularly perturbed. 

-

Lindsey is sleeping on the top bunk in case Emily wants her bed. She’s ten minutes into a nap when someone barges into the on-call room. Lindsey is going to ignore it in favor of stealing a few more minutes of sleep especially when the mattress below her creaks as someone sinks down onto it. She’s not even fully awake yet.

Then she hears Emily sniffling and snaps awake. Lindsey hesitates and lays completely still on her side. For a second she seems to stop and Lindsey’s heart rate normalizes. Then Emily starts sobbing out of nowhere and Lindsey drops to her feet automatically.

It startles Emily who scrambles back against the wall of her bunk and curls in on herself. She’s hiccuping with the effort of trying to hold back her sobs and Lindsey ducks her head into her bunk, careful to keep her distance.

“Hey.” Her voice is soft as she stands with her hands braced on her knees. “Do you wanna talk about it?” 

Emily shakes her head. Lindsey nods. She breathes out through her nose. “Do you want me to stay?” Emily doesn’t respond right away. She’s trying to bite back hiccups that won’t stop. There are still tears running down her cheeks and she’s shaking all over. Lindsey aches to hold her but doesn’t. It’s not really her place anymore. 

“Okay. I can get Kelley if you-”

As Lindsey is standing up, Emily’s fingers catch in her scrubs. She holds on tight and fast and tugs. Lindsey ducks back into the bunk and braces her good hand against the mattress. 

“You want me to come in there?”

Emily just nods so Lindsey climbs in beside her. She’s careful at first only letting their shoulders touch and turning her hand palm up in case Emily wants to hold her hand. She does. She threads their fingers and holds on tight and Lindsey brushes the back of Emily’s hand with her thumb. 

She’s still crying but softer now. Lindsey resists the urge to wipe the tears. Instead, she sandwiches Emily’s hand between both of hers and rubs circles into both her palm and the back of her hand. 

“So I think Mal has a crush on this patient. It’s bad. Like you can’t _ do _ that, right?”

When Emily speaks, her voice is raw. “Believe it or not,” she swallows around a lump in her throat. “We don’t really have that problem in my specialty.”

Lindsey laughs loud and long and despite it all it makes Emily smile just barely. 

“Right. Well, this guy is probably gonna die and then I’m going to have to deal with her.”

“Is he really gonna die? It is a _ he _ right?”

“Oh yeah. Mal’s straight.”

“That’s a shame.”

“I know!” 

They talk about nothing for twenty minutes. Emily falls asleep with her head on Lindsey’s shoulder. 

Lindsey’s shift ended half an hour ago. She doesn’t go anywhere.

-  
“Are you sure you don’t just want to go home?” Kelley asks for the umpteenth time. Emily gives her hand a tighter squeeze than is really necessary.

“Kel. You don’t have to worry about me.”

Kelley purses her lips. “I always worry about you.”

“I can take care of myself, you know.”

“You don’t _ have _ to.” 

Emily doesn’t know what to say to that. She doesn’t know what to say to Kelley a lot of the time now. It’s weird because they used to be so in sync but now it’s like they’re having to relearn everything. They’re just out of step with each other enough that the dance doesn’t work. 

But the tentative smile Kelley gives her and the way she reaches over to tuck a flyaway strand of hair behind Emily’s ear is so familiar that Emily thinks maybe they’re okay after all.

“Because we can just watch a movie at home if that’s easier.”

Emily shakes her head. “I want movie theater popcorn. Extra butter.” 

Kelley laughs but not at her and Emily leans in without really thinking about it. Kelley’s eyes get wide before Emily kisses her and it’d be funny if Emily couldn’t count on one hand the number of times _ she’d _ initiated a kiss since Kelley got to Portland.

They melt together easily. It’s not a particularly suggestive or deep kiss but it says a lot of things Emily can’t find the words for right now.

_ I miss you. _

_ I loved you. _

_ Thank you. _

_ (I think I’m falling for somebody else.) _

From the backseat, Bagel starts barking and they’re forced to break the kiss. Emily laughs against Kelley’s cheek. Kelley just frowns.

Emily presses her thumb into Kelley’s collarbone. “Popcorn?” 

“Extra butter,” Kelley replies as she climbs out of the car. 

Bagel immediately scrambles over the center console and into the driver’s seat, her tail wagging. Emily hooks her leash to her collar and gets out, too. Bagel follows after her. They have a blanket and a bunch of pillows set up in front of the car. The drive-in screen is playing advertisements for the concession stand. 

“Come on, Bitty.” Emily sinks down onto the blankets and Bagel follows, settling practically in Emily’s lap. She’s busy petting her when someone calls her name.

“Sonnett?” 

She glances up automatically to see Rose, Mal, and Lindsey weaving their way through the parked cars with their arms laden with snacks and drinks. Rose waves with her free hand. Mal bounds right over and shoves some of her snacks into Emily’s hands so that she can pull Bagel into her lap instead. 

Rose is already making her way back to their car. Lindsey looks unsure. She says something Emily can’t quite make out to Rose and then slowly makes her way over.

Emily sits up farther and then kicks back casually against some of the pillows. Bagel drapes her lower half over her legs while she licks Mal’s face. 

“Hey,” Lindsey says.

“Hey,” Emily replies. “Long time no see.”

“Yeah. It’s like you’re stalking me or something.” 

“You guys are the ones who followed me here so technically you guys are stalking us.” 

“Us?” 

“Well this isn’t date night for Bagel and Em,” Kelley says as she returns from the concession stand. 

It’s like a switch shifts. Mal stands up and knocks Bagel back into Emily’s lap. The dog whines and strains against her leash to get to Lindsey and when the leash doesn’t give enough, she nips at Kelley’s ankles. 

Kelley ignores all of this and takes a seat next to Emily. She slings an arm around her shoulders and holds the extra-buttered popcorn out to her. Emily takes a piece. 

“Your friends should stay,” Kelley says in a tone that says they absolutely shouldn’t. 

Mal shifts from one foot to the other. “That’s oka-”

“We’ve got Rose waiting for us anyway. Nice seeing you guys. And you, Bagel.” Lindsey crouches down to scratch Bagel behind the ears a couple of times before standing back up. She gives the two of them an awkward wave before she and Mal walk away. 

“Were they acting weird or is it just me?”

“It’s definitely you.”

-

Mal leans in the doorway while Dansby packs his stuff. 

“I heard you’re leaving me.” She pouts at him when he spins to look at her. His smile is guilty.

“I just...can’t spend my entire life in a hospital, Dr. Pugh. I don’t know how you do it.” 

Mal walks further into the room to stand about an arm’s length away with her arms crossed. He stops putting things into his bag. She crosses her arms. “It wouldn’t be forever. It’s just until-”

“I’ve been on that list for years. I was supposed to get a heart last time I was here and we both know how that turned out.” 

Mal worries her lip between her teeth and does something kind of stupid. She reaches for Dansby. She rests both hands on his forearms and it forces him to meet her gaze. “It buys you time. You’re _ young _, Dans. You have a lot left to offer.”

“Yeah.” Dansby scoffs. “My dazzling personality and coaching little kids.”

Mal’s hands slide down to take his hands instead. He looks down at their joined hands, back up at Mal’s face, and back again. “That’s a lot of good stuff, I think.”

“Dr. Pugh I just-”

“My friends call me Mal.”

He absolutely beams at her. She laces their fingers and squeezes his hands before letting go. “Look at this.” She produces a stack of papers from the bag she’s carrying and slaps them on his bedside table. When he doesn’t react, she keeps talking. “They make a portable LVAD. It’s like the size of your backpack. You’d be able to leave the hospital once you’re stable after the surgery and you get the same benefits but you could come back only if you needed to.”

“Once I get a heart?” Dansby’s smile is spreading slowly as if he doesn’t quite believe what she’s telling him. Mal nods. 

“I could kiss you!” Mal giggles but takes a step back from him. Dansby holds up both hands. “But that would be inappropriate.”

“Yeah. Way against the rules.”

“Yeah.”

“So what do you say?”

“Will you be in there when they do it? That Dr. Morgan kind of scares me.”

“I’ll be wherever you want me to be, Dans.” 

“I want you there.”

“Okay then.”

-

After work, Lindsey ends up at Joe’s. She’s with Rose and Russell. Mal will meet up with them once she’s finished with Dansby. 

“Why do you always win?” Russell complains as Lindsey scores yet another bullseye on the dart board. “It’s got to be rigged somehow.”

Rose looks annoyed leaning against the table where their empty glasses rest. “Or,” she says as she finishes the last of the beer from her bottle in one large swig. “You’re just bad at darts. You owe us beers.”

“I owe _ Lindsey _ a beer. All you did was stand there and try to psych me out.”

Rose blinks at him. “It worked, didn’t it? We’re a team. Right, Linds? I’m your good luck charm?”

Lindsey is busy gathering the darts back out of the board and taking her spot at the line again. She tosses three more bullseyes in quick succession. She grabs their empty glasses as she passes by the table to return the darts.

“I can win without you.”

“Wow. Okay. Next time I won’t help.”

“Looking forward to it.” 

Lindsey’s not drunk. She’s not even comfortably buzzed. It’s why she’s giving Russell such a deep frown while he talks about the surgery he’d “practically performed” earlier in the day. 

“You were with Tobin. There’s no _ way _ she let you take lead,” Rose says with an eyeroll. 

“How would you know? You were busy doing post-ops.”

“Because Tobin’s not an idiot?”

Lindsey decides that she needs another drink to deal with them. She also really needs Mal to show up. She heads for the bar and leans against it as she waits for the bartender to come to her side of the bar. While she waits, she pulls out her phone and hovers over Emily’s text thread. Their last conversation, before she’d let Emily know that they’d be at Joe’s that evening, was just about Bagel. 

She thinks about sending a message. She has one half-typed when a beer materializes in front of her nose. Lindsey blinks at it and then at Joe. 

“I didn’t order this.” 

It’s not her usual brand. It’s one of those craft beers. Just give her a good IPA and she’s fine. Joe shrugs and points down the bar at the person who’d ordered it for her. 

Lindsey almost drops the bottle she’s gripping loosely by the neck. 

From this angle, they look _ so _ much alike. The hairs on the back of Lindsey’s neck stand on end for a second. If Emily showed up just when she happened to think about her, that would be the second weirdest thing that had happened to her that day. 

But it’s not Emily. It’s her sister. She waves lazily and offers Lindsey a smile and Lindsey has to try really hard not to think about how Emily’s dimples are just a little bit different than Emma’s. She picks up the drink and makes her way across the bar to take the seat next to her, one foot planted firmly on the ground and the other on the bottom rung of the stool. 

“What’s this?”

“It’s a blueberry ale.” Lindsey must make a face because Emma laughs. “Hey, don’t knock it ‘til you try it.”

Pursing her lips, Lindsey does. 

It’s sweet but not overpowering and it settles easily. She takes another sip. 

Emma’s mouth twitches. 

“Fine,” Lindsey says with a shrug. “It’s good.”

“I’ll help you out. _ Emma was right _.”

Lindsey shakes her head and adjusts a bit, scooting her stool closer to Emma’s and leaning in with one foot on a rung of _ Emma’s _ stool instead. “Emma got lucky.”

“Is that a promise?”

Lindsey almost chokes on her drink. She sputters a little bit and she will never live it down if she dies of aspiration because her ex-whatever’s twin flirted with her. At least there are doctors here to resuscitate her, but she doesn’t know if it’s worth it to hear Rose chirp her for the rest of her life. 

“...depends,” is all she comes up with when she finally finds her voice. It’s embarrassing.

Emma drums her fingers against the bar. Lindsey notices her nails are painted. “Depends on what?”

_ How drunk I am. How convincing _ ** _you_ ** _ are. How dumb I am. _

“How much effort you put in.”

“Are you playing hard to get, Dr. Horan?” Emma’s laugh isn’t quite the same as Emily’s. Lindsey wishes she could stop comparing them. She vows not to think about Emily for the rest of the night.

“Maybe. Do you like to play?”

“Yeah. But I warn you now I don’t like to lose.”

“Neither do I.”

-

Her alarm doesn’t wake her up. Light streaming through the blinds she must have forgotten to shut the previous night does. She groans, rolls over, and presses her face into her pillow.

And gets a mouthful of hair. Hair that doesn’t belong to her. 

It doesn’t even belong to a person. She pushes the unfamiliar dog away and she whines as she settles on the empty side of the bed. 

Lindsey eyes the golden doodle cautiously as she tries to get her bearings. She has to pick up her clothes from the floor to make the walk of shame. When she reaches a kitchen she doesn’t recognize, there’s no coffee waiting for her.

There is a note, though.

_ Last night was fun. I see why my sister likes you so much ;) _

_ Help yourself to whatever. I have an early surgery. And could you please let Harper out? Thanks babe! _

_ -Em _

Lindsey can’t help but think that’s not the right Em. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm cornerkix_ on twitter where i yell about stuff.


	10. it only gets much worse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's been a minute.
> 
> lots of things have happened in the real world since i've been gone. there are way more important things happening than fic right now. educate yourselves, call your congressmen/women, register to vote if you're old enough and please, please get out there and vote this november. 
> 
> that being said...here's the next bit of this. unbeta'd, run through a spellcheck, and a little shorter than other chapters, but it's what i planned out for this point in the story from a long time ago. 
> 
> have fun. stay safe out there.

Lindsey is so nervous as she sits in the waiting room cradling her injured hand with her good one. Her leg is bouncing and she’s probably going to make her lip bleed from chewing on it so hard. A man with a walking boot is called back next. Then a little kid with a bright pink cast. Lindsey checks her watch. She checks her phone. She worries. 

“Dr. Horan?” 

Lindsey jumps to her feet immediately and follows the nurse back into the orthopedic clinic. When she takes her vitals, her blood pressure is up. 

The nurse smiles kindly. “Nervous?”

Lindsey grits her teeth. “A little.” 

“The doctor will be in shortly.”

_ Shortly _ can mean ten minutes or an hour. Lindsey knows how this works. 

She starts pacing. She seriously considers logging onto the hospital’s electronic medical record and pulling up the X-rays she’d had taken this morning but she doesn’t because that’s technically against the rules. She should have had Mal or Rose pull them up for her before she came to her appointment but Rose had just gotten to bed in the middle of a 24-hour shift and she hadn’t seen Mal before heading to radiology.

Strangely she hadn’t seen Emily, either. She’s gotten used to accidentally riding the elevator together in the mornings. Sometimes they exchange smalltalk. Most of the time Lindsey just tries to steal glances at Emily without being too weird about it. 

She doesn’t know Emily’s schedule, though. Maybe she’d been covering a night call, too. 

There’s a knock at the door and Lindsey feels like she’s going to throw up. “Come on in,” she says instead. 

She almost wishes she hadn’t when Russell struts into the exam room. It must show on her face because he scoffs while he settles into the stool by the counter. “Don’t look so happy to see me, Linds.” 

“Where’s Dr. Callahan?” 

“Doing surgeries.” 

Lindsey can’t help but smirk at that. If Russell’s here he’s not happy. 

“Anyway,” Russell says as he pulls up the images. “You’re good to go.” 

Lindsey fist pumps then feels kind of stupid about it. 

“Once I saw this baby off.”

Lindsey’s face falls. “No.”

“What d’you mean _ no _? Aren’t you sick of scutwork?” 

“Yeah but I don’t wan_ t yo _u to take it off.” 

“Don’t worry,” Russell says while he starts gathering supplies from the cabinet above the sink. “I’ll use the small bone saw.”

-  
They’re having another fight.

Emily can’t remember a day when they _ haven’t _ argued about something. After the drive-in it was about Lindsey. It’s almos _ t alwa _ys about Lindsey which isn’t really fair. When Emily was with Lindsey they were technically separated. It’s not really like when she caught Kelley with Alex at all. 

And Emily tries really hard not to bring up Alex at all. She has to work with Alex. Alex is their only cardiology fellow. And she’s brilliant.

It’s annoying.

Today, though, they’re not fighting about Lindsey _ or _ Alex. They’re not even fighting about a person.

“What makes you think we can take care of another dog when we can barely take care of ourselves?”

Kelley is standing at the landing overlooking the kitchen_ . _ Her hair’s piled up in a damp bun and she’s half-dressed, a worn t-shirt of Emily’s on top and dress pants on the bottom. There’s a smear of toothpaste on her cheek.

It’d be cute if Emily wasn’t mad at her. 

“We take care of Bagel just fine. And she’s probably bored here by herself all day!” 

Bagel is sprawled out on her side at the bottom of the stairs and lounging in a patch of sun. She lifts her head when she hears her name and then rolls onto her stomach so that she can rest her chin on her paws instead. Her ears flatten against her head while Kelley’s voice rises a little bit.

“Bagel _ hates _ me! She bit my hand the other day when I was feeding her. I swear she tried to trip me on my run this morning.” Kelley takes the last few steps down to the hallway.

Emily wrinkles her nose and lets out a humorless laugh. “She’s a dog. She doesn’t _ hate _ you.”

Bagel chooses this moment to stand up. She stretches. She yawns. And then she nips at Kelley’s heels as she makes her way to the kitchen. Emily stalks after her with Bagel on her tail. 

“She just tried to bite me right now. She hates me. I think Horan sent the dog over here just to make my life worse, actually.”

“Don’t bring Lindsey into this. She has nothing to do with this.” 

“She has everything to do with this! If it wasn’t for her we’d be closer to normal by now!” 

Emily doesn’t have anything to say to that. Kelley’s right. That doesn’t mean Emily’s going to _ tell _ her that. 

She’s not going to tell Kelley anything else, actually. She shrugs into her leather jacket, grabs her keys and backpack, and heads for the front door. 

Kelley follows her. 

“What, you're just gonna run away again? That’s great, Emily. Things get a little hard and you can’t handle it. You just run away like you ran away from Virginia.” 

Emily’s shoulders are practically by her ears when she ducks outside. 

It finally feels like she can breathe again. Inside the house it’s hard to get enough air into her lungs. Out here there’s not so much pressure. Emily rests her back against the door and rests one hand on her stomach. She takes a few long, slow breaths and makes sure that she can feel her stomach moving with each breath. Her mind seems to clear.

From the other side of the door she can hear Bagel scratching and whining. Emily places a palm flat against the wood. “I’ll see you later, Bagel. We’ll go for a run. Just you and me. Promise.”

Then she walks to the driveway where her motorcycle is parked and climbs on.

-

Lindsey flexes her fingers. She rotates her wrist. She ties her shoes with both hands for the first time in weeks. It feels _ awesome _.

She looks up from the bench when Mal and Rose walk in. Rose immediately holds her hand out for a high five. Lindsey returns it with her left hand and Rose interlaces their fingers for just a second before letting go.

“Finally,” Rose complains as she sinks onto the bench beside Lindsey and goes to pull her hair back. “It’s no fun fighting with _ Russell _ for cases. He always messes them up. I think lack of real competition has made me get complacent.”

“Hey!” Mal looks offended.

Rose lifts her eyebrows. “You’ve got your heart guy. Which I want to steal, by the way. You don’t even wanna go into cardio. I’ve never seen an LVAD before.”

“Just because I don’t wanna _ do _ it doesn’t mean I don’t wanna learn. _ ” _

Lindsey is busy putting her watch back on. She tucks her chain under her scrub top. She double-knots her sneakers. Her hands shake.

Rose stops talking mid-sentence. “Are you nervous? You’re Lindsey Horan. What do you have to be nervous about?”

Without thinking about it, Lindsey shakes out her left hand. She rotates her wrist again. “Nothing.”

“You’re gonna be fine, you know?” Mal says from her other side. “I wouldn’t worry about it.” Lindsey’s glad somebody has confidence in her because she kind of feels like she forgets how to hold a scalpel.

Tobin pokes her head into the room and glances at her watch. She doesn’t actually _ say _ anything but the three of them scramble to put their stuff away and head to the door anyway. She looks at Lindsey’s arm and a lazy smile quirks her mouth.

“You’re back?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool. You’re on ED consults.” 

Lindsey’s face falls as she falls into step with Tobin. “Really? Because I thought maybe I could-”

“You haven’t held a scalpel in almost two months. You need to practice procedures and remember how to hold the instruments. If you get anything operative, you can assist.” Lindsey falls back while Rose bounds forward.

“What about me? What about that lobectomy…?”

“That’s a private patient. I’ve got him. Mal?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re with Swanson, right?”

Mal wrings her hands and sputters through “I -we’re not- he’s just teaching me about baseball!” 

Lindsey snorts. Rose rolls her eyes. Tobin raises a brow. “Alex is doing his LVAD today. Are you in on that or not because Lavelle’s ready to break down the OR door.” 

Rose stops laughing. Mal blushes and nods. “Yeah I got him.”

“Why are you guys just standing there? Go.” Tobin flicks her wrist to dismiss them and Lindsey and Mal disperse. 

Rose is still following Tobin as she stops off at the coffee cart and gets her own black coffee and a green tea. When she turns around she almost runs right into her. Hot liquid sloshes onto the floor between them as Rose takes a quick step back.

“What?”

“What do I do?” 

Tobin looks thoughtful. She takes a sip of coffee and steps into the elevator but sticks her foot between the doors to keep it from snapping shut as Rose blinks back at her like a little kid waiting for instructions from her teacher. 

“Weren’t you here all night?”

“Yeah, but-”

“No buts. It’s an 80 hour work week for a reason. Go home.” 

Rose frowns. Tobin sighs. “I don’t know what to tell you, dude. Rules are rules. It’s for your safety and the patients’.”

Tobin takes her foot back. The elevator doors slide shut. 

Rose _ is _ tired...but that doesn’t mean she has to go home. 

-  
Emily ends up at her sister’s without really having to think about it. She considers hopping back on her bike but doesn’t really know where else she’d even go. She fishes her phone out of her pocket and calls in to work to take a sick day. 

Then she calls Christen.

“Is everything okay?”

Emily feels a little bit overwhelmed at how worried she sounds even over the phone. She feels pressure behind her eyes but wills the tears away and offers a dry laugh. 

“I mean, not really. But I just wanted to tell you not to worry. It’s a mental health day.”

Christen hums sympathetically. “We all need those sometimes. Let me know if you need anything okay? I’m done at five and so is Tobin so even if you just want company or something-”

“I think Kelley will call you before I do.”

A sort of awkward silence hangs between them. Emily feels kind of bad for saying it. Tobin and Christen have known Kelley way longer than they’ve known her and both of them have taken Emily’s side more than she would have expected.

But they’re still Kelley’s friends first. And most of Emily’s friends in Portland are also Lindsey’s friends. 

She’s never felt so alone. Not even when Kelley cheated on her. 

That’s probably why she’s at Emma’s. 

“Sorry. That was rude. I...sorry.”

“I’m here for you if you need it, Emily. I don’t know what else to tell you.”

“Thanks. I owe you.”

“For what?”

“You have to work with Kelley today not me.” 

Christen groans. Emily bids her goodbye and hangs up.

-  
Dansby’s watching the Braves game when she gets to his room. His eyes are glued to the screen even when Mal starts talking to him about the procedure. He shushes her with a finger to his lips and smiles sheepishly. 

“He’s pitching a no-hitter in the eighth. We might have to postpone this thing.”

“You just cursed him, then,” Mal replies with a shake of her head. She steps further into the room and watches the Braves’ pitcher windup. The batter digs in, takes a swing, and the bat connects with a dull _ crack _. The ball sails into center field...and the outfielder drops it. It pops right out of his glove and rolls onto the grass while the runner sprints to first base. 

“What the hell?” Dansby complains over the announcers calling the play a gross error. On screen, the centerfielder jogs in to the pitcher and delivers the ball directly to his glove. He probably apologizes. 

Mal flicks the television off. 

“That’s a sign that it’s time for surgery. You ready for this?”

“No.” Dansby sits up in his chair and combs his fingers through his hair which Mal has realized by now as his nervous tick. “Can we go through it one more time?”

Mal sits down on his bed with her legs curled beneath her. “The LVAD is like a pump. It will take some pressure off of your heart so that it can keep pumping even if we can’t get you a new heart yet.”

“And it’s like a backpack, right? I can leave the hospital?”

“It kind of sounds like you’re trying to get rid of me,” Mal points out with a pout. 

Dansby leans across the gap between the bed and the chair he’s sitting in to rest a hand on top of one of Mal’s. Mal tries to ignore the way her own heart seems to skip a beat at the small action. “Dr. Mallory Pugh, you are one of very few things I don’t hate about this hospital along with the cable package including MLB network and the green Jello.” 

“Do you have any questions?”

“Go out with me,” Dansby says without hesitation. It’s not even phrased as a question. Mal stands up and their hands drop. 

“You’re my patient. I can’t.”

“I get to leave the hospital,” Dansby argues. He sits with his hands on his knees, eyes bright. “That means I won’t be your patient anymore.”

“Only until you get a heart.”

“Mal, I still got a heart and it wants what it wants.”

Mal stares at him. “Is that a Selena Gomez lyric?”

Tilting his head, Dansby tells her “I don’t know who that is.” She tries not to laugh and presses her lips together to hide a smile. He’s funny. 

And cute, but that doesn’t really matter. He’s a patient. She’s his doctor. That’s it. 

“Do you have any _ medical _ questions?”

He looks at the ceiling. He sighs. He closes his eyes, so Mal can look at him without getting caught. If they’d met somewhere else, at Joe’s, maybe, she probably _ would _ go out with him. He doesn’t get to know that. 

“Is the heart really the strongest muscle in the human body?”

Mal considers it. “Some people say so. Dr. Morgan would.”

“What about you?”

“I think it depends on how much you work it out. It’s like any muscle. If you don’t use it, you lose it.”

“This will help mine work better, right? This is the right call?” He’s actually asking. His voice kind of shakes when he says it. 

Mal reaches for his hand again. “In my medical opinion, it’s your best option to get to the finish line, yeah.”

Dansby nods. “Let’s do it.”

-  
The ER has started to become Lindsey’s domain and she _ hates _ it. She’s a surgeon not an ER doctor. She hates that she patches patients up enough to make it to the OR or the floors and then she never sees them again. She’s spent many nights looking up patients she treated in the emergency room to see how everything turned out or asking Mal and Rose whatever happened to her patients. 

She needs to get out of here.

“Dr. Horan,” nurse Tyler calls from the desk. “We missed you! Can you take bed two? She’s asking for a female provider.” His smile looks apologetic. Lindsey knows that this is probably going to be something gynecological. That’s just how it goes. 

But she smiles back at him and takes the chart in her left hand. She’s got two hands now. It’s going to be a good day. 

“Good morning Miss Green,” Lindsey says as she steps into the patient room. Her eyes are still scanning the chart. “What can I help you with today?” 

“I’m pregnant with twins.” Lindsey almost laughs. It’s like she can’t get away from twins. “And I fell down the stairs carrying my groceries and now I don’t feel them moving like they were before and I’m afraid I hurt my babies before they even get here. I’m not ready for this to begin with and now what kind of Mom am I if I hurt them while they’re still in there?” 

Lindsey sets the file down and looks at her patient for the first time. She’s young, probably early twenties, and there’s no one here with her. That seems weird but Lindsey ignores it for now. “Miss Green-”

“You can call me Jenny.”

Lindsey nods. “Jenny, let’s not worry until we have to. Why don’t we get a look at those babies? Is there somebody I should call?”

“Can we just look at the babies first? I don’t want to worry anyone.”

“Of course. Let me get the ultrasound and we’ll take a look, okay?”

Lindsey steps outside of the room to find the nearest portable ultrasound machine and page OB. She knows how to use the thing but more so for traumas, to look for internal bleeding and not for babies. 

She doesn’t tell Jenny that when she comes back with a nurse, the ultrasound, and a smile. “Ready to check on the little peanuts?” 

Jenny takes a deep, steadying breath and nods. She lifts the hem of her shirt and looks up at the ceiling while Lindsey hooks up the machine and puts some gel on the end of the probe. “Little cold,” she warns Jenny as she places some of the gel on her stomach. She settles into her stool and turns the monitor as she places the transducer on Jenny’s abdomen and moves it around. 

Lindsey can hear her own heartbeat in her ears. Ultrasound techs and OB doctors always make this seem so easy, but she hasn’t had to do this since medical school and even then, she was never alone doing it. 

With a little maneuvering, a blurry picture of a baby appears on the screen and the comforting, quick _ lub-dub _ of a fetal heartbeat. Lindsey’s mouth quirks up a little on one side as she looks around the baby for any signs of bleeding but everything seems to check out. 

“There’s one,” she says and Jenny looks away from the ceiling and at the screen instead. Lindsey traces out the baby’s head with her finger. “Here’s the skull which looks well formed. Here’s the arms and she’s got her one leg kicked out a little bit, but-” A laugh cuts her off as she shakes her head, pointing to where the baby shifts even on the monitor. “She’s moving just fine.”

“She?”

Lindsey’s smile falters. “Oh. Did you not want to know? I’m so so-”

“No it’s fine. I just...didn’t know.” Jenny’s looking at the screen with an almost awed expression on her face. She blinks a few times, quickly, and asks “Where’s the other one? Are they okay, too?”

Lindsey tries moving to her left at first but sees nothing. She tries to the right but only sees more static. A crease forms between her eyebrows as she drops the probe lower and then lets out a triumphant click of her tongue once she finds the second twin.

“Found her.”

“They’re both girls?” Jenny wants to know. Lindsey gets closer to the monitor and waits for the second baby to move a little bit. 

“Yep. You ready to handle that?”

Jenny places her hand on her stomach and looks back at the ceiling. “No.”

“Hey, at least you’re honest.” Lindsey offers her a tissue to clean off the ultrasound jelly and stands up. “So the babies look great. I’m gonna leave this here because one of the OB docs will come and double check. And you need an X-ray on that arm. I’m worried sure it’s broken.”

“Really?” 

The way Jenny’s cradling it to her chest, Lindsey is 50% certain. “Maybe. We’ll wait for the X-rays and then I’ll come back and check on you, okay?”

She turns to go. Jenny stops her at the door with a “Dr. Horan?” She turns back. “Thank you.”

“I didn’t really do anything.”

“You let me see my daughters were okay. Thank you.”

Maybe the ER isn’t _ so _ bad _ . _

-  
Emma’s two-bedroom apartment is on the second floor of the two-story house that serves as her veterinarian office. Emily lets herself in the front door and peers into the living room, which also serves as the patient waiting room.

This turns out to be a mistake.

A college aged kid in mismatched clothes stands up from the couch and hands her a crate. Before Emily can even react, he’s hurrying out of the office. She glances down through the openings in the cage at a small, cream-colored puppy and then back towards the door. 

“Hey! We’re not a rescue!”

The kid’s already peeling out of the driveway. Emily stands on the porch holding the crate while the dog inside whimpers pitifully. She lifts the cage a bit so she can look through the bars at the puppy.

He’s kind of ugly, actually. He has triangular ears that are too big for his head and he kind of looks like an uncooked chicken. Emily thinks he’s a French bulldog or something. His eyes are big and he’s panting even though it’s cool in the office.

“Emma?” She calls tentatively. Maybe her sister’s just working on another animal in the back. She gets no response so she goes back inside but not before flipping the _ closed _sign and locking the door behind her. 

Once in the living room, she sits down cross-legged on the floor and unlatches the crate. She expects the puppy to bolt but he stays put, slumped over a bit and breathing hard. 

“What’s wrong, buddy?” Emily asks him. He whines at her and presses his little body to the back wall of the crate. She tries coaxing him out with some of the treat samples Emma keeps on the reception desk but he doesn’t budge. She lays flat on her stomach and blows some hair out of her face, meeting the dog’s dark eyes with her own. 

“I can’t help you if you stay in there,” she tells him in a steady voice. His ears flick towards the sound. It’s kind of like working with really little kids. _ They _ can’t tell you what’s wrong, either, but using baby voices on them doesn’t really help. “But I’m not gonna make you move. We can do whatever you want.” 

While Emily talks, the puppy gets to his feet. She notices that he’s favoring the left front one and that he won’t put any weight on it at all. She rests her chin upon her hands and keeps talking to him. 

“I have a dog at home, you know. She’s prettier than you but you’d probably get along well. Her name’s Bagel. What’s your name anyway? You look kind of like a Cream Cheese…” 

By now, he’s stumbled over the threshold of the crate and his nose is inches from Emily’s. She sits up slowly and he startles back, flopping onto his haunches. She sees now that there’s something stuck in his paw pad. 

“Oh, dude,” Emily says when the dog reaches the paw out as if to shake her hand. She’s careful as she takes it in her hand, flipping his paw over and gently tracing over what looks like a thumbtack with her fingetips. “I can totally fix that.” 

She tries Emma’s cell one more time. It goes straight to voicemail. 

Emily picks the puppy up and carries him to the back of the office. “Don’t worry. I got you.”

-  
“What are you doing here?” Lindsey can’t help but laugh. She hadn’t run into _ Emily _ Sonnett yet today but her sister is sitting across from her in the hospital cafeteria. 

“I just figured,” Emma says as she slides an iced coffee across the table towards her. “You didn’t get much sleep last night and could use this.” 

It’s so weird because Emily used to slide her coffee across nurses’ stations after they’d been up late. Lindsey tries for the millionth time not to compare them. It’s not fair to anyone involved. 

“Emma…”

Emma holds up a palm. “You don’t have to _ Emma _ me. Last night was fun. That’s all it has to be. But you were so sad before I talked to you. I just wanted to, like, make sure you’re okay.” 

Lindsey’s heart swells then sinks. She probably shouldn’t be making friends with her ex-whatever’s twin sister even if it cracks her up when Emma says “Sonny’s a dumbass. She talks about you all the time. I don’t know what she’s doing.” 

She takes a sip of her coffee. 

Emma glances down at her phone again and silences it for the second time in ten minutes. Even though she flipped the phone facedown, Emily’s squinty-eyed smile of a contact photo gives her away. 

“You need to take that?”

Emma dumps an alarming amount of sugar into her own coffee. “Nope. She can wait.” 

“Look, I don’t want to come between you and your sister-”

“You never thought about a threesome with twins? You’re in the minority.”

“Gross.”

“How is that gross?” Emma says between sips. “You’ve slept with both of us.”

“Not _ together._”

“And that wouldn’t interest you?”

“Why are we talking about this?”

“Because you don’t want to talk about anything important.”

“You’re the one who said this was casual.”

Emma sighs and it reminds Lindsey so much of Emily that she has to look away. “I wanted our romantic thing to be casual. I don’t want to string you along again.” That hurts less than Alex’s fist even though she doesn’t think Emma _ means _ it to hurt. “But we can be friends.”

Lindsey thinks about how she wants to be friends with Emily but doesn’t know how to even broach the subject with her. Maybe being friends with her sister could help? She looks up into familiar eyes again. 

“Was it that bad?”

Emma stares at her. “No. Dude, it was that _ good _. I can’t keep doing that unless I plan on wifing you up.” 

“Are you proposing?” 

“Well,” Emma says with a playful grin. “My mom always _ did _ think I’d get married first.”

-  
When Emma gets home, Emily is lounging on the couch with the puppy watching TV. She lifts her head for a moment and so does the dog but then she lays back down and he mirrors her. “Where have you been?” Emily doesn’t wait for an answer. “I had to perform surgery on this dog’s paw because the vet was out.”

“What?” Emma asks as she walks into the room and pushes at her sister until she sits up and she can sit down, too. The dog in Emily’s lap scrambles to the other side of the couch to get away from her. 

“Some kid dumped this dog on you and he had a thumbtack in his paw.” She lifts up the dog’s bandaged foot proudly. “But people doctors are kind of okay at dogs, too, in a pinch.” 

“No, what are you doing here?” Emma flicks the television off and Emily tells her they were _ just _ getting to the good part. “Shouldn’t you be working?”

“_ You _ weren’t at work when you were supposed to be, either.”

Emma levels her with a look. “Did you and Kelley get into another fight?” Emily opens her mouth to answer but Emma’s still talking. “Don’t you think this is a sign or something? Why are you both torturing yourselves?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“What wouldn’t I understand?” Emma asks. “That you keep choosing the safest option because you’re afraid of getting hurt again? You’re back with the person who hurt you in the first place. It doesn’t make sense.”

“See,” Emily says, climbing to her feet. “You don’t get it.”

Emma stands up, too, blocking Emily’s clear path to the door. “Explain it to me. Make it make sense.” 

“I don’t have to explain anything to you. It’s my life.” 

“You’re not just fucking things up for you, though.” 

Emily rolls her eyes and sidesteps her twin and looks for her jacket. The puppy she rescued whimpers and jumps down from the couch, hot on her heels. A quick scan of the room tells her that her leather jacket must be downstairs in the office, but the denim one thrown haphazardly over an armchair is familiar, too. 

Emily’s almost to the door. She could just go. 

But she _ knows _ that jacket. 

She spins on her heel and stares at her sister. “What was Lindsey doing here, Emma?” 

Emma’s eyes flick from Emily’s to Lindsey’s forgotten jean jacket and then to her shoes. Then she meets her sister’s gaze firmly. “You don’t get to be mad about who I sleep with when you’re still married. You made your choice here, Emily. Lindsey is allowed to make choices, too.” 

“This isn’t about Lindsey’s choices!” Emily’s aware that her voice is climbing without her really meaning it to. She expects bullshit from Kelley at this point. She expects it from Alex. She doesn’t expect it from Emma. 

“You’re my _ sister_! What the fuck?” 

“You really hurt her,” Emma says instead of explaining anything about why Lindsey was at her apartment last night. Emily scoffs and wheels around again to go. Emma reaches for her, fingers circling around her wrist. 

“She’s a good person. You lied to her. And she’s definitely not over you. You can’t keep, like, making out and cuddling in on-call rooms with Lindsey while still married to Kelley. It’s not fai-”

“It’s not fair that I got cheated on and my wife followed me to Portland, either, but shit happens.” 

Emily yanks her arm away from Emma and leaves. The door slams on the way out.

Emma stares at the little French bulldog who is still eyeing her suspiciously. “What are you looking at?”

-  
Christen smiles when the elevator doors flick open and Tobin’s already inside, leaning casually against the back wall with her arms crossed. She’s still wearing her soccer ball scrub cap and a tired grin of her own. 

“Hey, stranger,” Tobin drawls as Christen steps inside and the doors click shut again. 

“Hey.” Christen turns her back to Tobin and holds her hands behind her back. Tobin sidles up behind her and slips her hand into one of Christen’s. She’s so close to her that she can feel Tobin’s breath on the back of her neck when she speaks. 

“When you get off tonight maybe we should-”

The doors spring open again and Tobin almost trips over her own feet trying to put some space between them. Alex Morgan arches an eyebrow at them both. 

“Please,” she says falling in line with Christen. “Don’t stop on my account.” 

“Uh, I’ll see ya later, Chris,” Tobin sputters, escaping from the elevator (on the wrong floor, Christen notes) just before the doors slide shut. 

Lindsey Horan ducks inside before they crash closed again. Christen carefully keeps herself between Lindsey and Alex. 

“Relax. That was a one-time thing. Right, Lindsey?” 

Lindsey isn’t sure if Alex means punching her or sleeping with her. She shrugs anyway. “Definitely.” 

An awkward silence follows. When the elevator stops, Christen steps out. “Don’t hurt each other,” she warns them. 

“We won’t,” Lindsey says.

“Anymore,” Alex adds with a smirk. 

Rose enters when Christen exits. “What are you doing here?” Lindsey asks her as she leans heavily against one of the elevator walls. “Weren’t you on last night?”

Rose waves her off. “Doesn’t matter. I want surgeries.” 

“If Tobin catches you-”

“Are you gonna say something?” Lindsey doesn’t. “That’s what I thought.” 

It grows quiet again except for Alex, who’s whistling a song that Lindsey is pretty sure is by Justin Bieber. 

She gets off at the cardiology floor. Rose and Lindsey take the elevator down. When Rose steps out on the peds floor, Kelley steps on. 

She’s humming the same song as Alex. Before the doors close again, Rose meets Lindsey’s eyes. Rose’s are like saucers. 

“Hey,” Kelley abruptly stops humming when she notices they’re alone. She steps back to stand beside Lindsey. “Have you talked to Emily today?”

Something about Kelley bringing up Emily makes Lindsey’s blood run hot. It’s probably because of Alex. Lindsey takes a breath in through her nose, counts to seven, and lets it out. 

“No. Haven’t _ you _ talked to her?”

“Yes.” Kelley speaks slowly, like she’s talking to one of the kids she takes care of. “We live together. I just haven’t seen her since this morning and I thought you might have.”

“Nope. _ We’re _ not seeing each other.”

The elevator opens. Lindsey steps out, even if it’s not her floor. Kelley does, too. They turn opposite directions.

-

Mal sits at Dansby’s bedside post-op. He’s still asleep and she’s close to it, dozing and half watching another baseball game in the armchair beside his bed. She has one of his hands, the one without the IV, loosely in hers. 

When he wakes up, he smiles sleepily at her and says “I must still be dreaming.” Mal promptly pinches his arm and he winces but doesn’t take his hand back. “Or not. How’d everything go?” He’s looking at the machine he’s hooked up to with a frown. 

“Everything went perfectly. Dr. Morgan and I expect a full recovery.”

“So I can go back to the minors.”

“I didn’t say that.” 

Dansby smiles at her and sits up against his pillows. “So when do I get to blow this joint?” 

Mal pouts at him. “You wanna leave me so soon?”

“I didn’t say that.” He sighs loudly and takes her hand in both of his. “I just hate hospitals. I know you love them but it creeps me out. I always think I’m gonna walk in here one day and never walk back out.”

“You get to walk out tomorrow with your fancy portable LVAD backpack. We just want to keep an eye on you overnight.”

“More like _ you _ wanna keep an eye on me overnight.”

Mal shakes her head, takes her hand back, and stands when a page about an incoming trauma comes in. “Don’t get cocky, Dansby Swanson.”

“Too late. Where are you going? I thought you were a Rockies fan.”

Mal looks at the television just in time to see one of the Rockies hit a grand slam. “I am. They always do better when I’m not watching. Besides, I’m being summoned.” 

“Not rectals again, I hope.”

“Nope, real doctor things.”

“You’re good at those.”

“See you tomorrow.”

“Looking forward to it.”

-  
When Lindsey gets back to the ER, Tyler is right in her face. “Lindsey,” he says. He never calls her by her first name. He’s one of the nurses who respects residents as physicians and not “baby doctors” or whatever else is said behind their backs. His eyes are kind of wide. 

“What’s up?” Lindsey asks, reaching out to steady him. 

“You need to go rescue your patient.”

“Rescue…?”

“You’ll see. There’s a trauma on its way so I gotta go, but just, you know, check on her.”

Lindsey does. When she walks into Jenny’s room, Russell’s there. She can’t help but roll her eyes. “Hey,” she says, stepping around him to get to Jenny. “She’s my patient. I got this.” 

He holds up a roll of gauze. “It’s not broken. I was just gonna wrap and set it.”

“Cool. I got it.” She smiles over Russell’s head at Jenny, whose heart monitor stops beeping while her heart rate slows. 

“I’m on ortho, though.”

“Did I consult ortho?” Lindsey asks, already knowing the answer. “Go find someone else’s patient to steal.” They stand toe-to-toe for a second or two. Then Russell throws his hands up and leaves, not before telling Lindsey if she wants to do splints and stitches, there’s an ER residency at the hospital across town.

“Thanks,” Jenny says, settling back into bed with her arm curled protectively around her belly. “That guy kinda creeps me out.”

“You’re not the only one.” Lindsey gathers her supplies and has Jenny hold her arm out so that she can apply the splint. It’s way easier now that she has two hands. 

“So,” Lindsey catches her eye. “Do you have any name ideas? For the babies?”

“I didn’t know they were girls until an hour ago.” Jenny runs her hand along her stomach. “But I’ve always liked _ Emily _ for a girl.”

Of course she does. Lindsey presses her lips together to keep from laughing. “I know an Emma and Emily who are twins, so all I can say is don’t do that.” 

Jenny wrinkles her nose. “You gotta be joking, right?”

“Nope. Not sure what the deal is there but-” Lindsey trails off as an announcement blares overhead.

“Level 1 trauma. ETA 2 minutes. Level 1 trauma. ETA 2 minutes.” 

Immediately, a group abandons what they’re doing to head towards the trauma bay instead. Lindsey double checks the splint she just placed and apologizes to Jenny. “Sorry, duty calls.”

When she reaches the ambulance bay, she finds Russell and Mal already there. Russell is fighting with the ties on his gown while Mal pointedly ignores him in favor of turning her back to Lindsey. Lindsey does up the back of Mal’s gown before shrugging into her own.

“What are you doing here?” It’s directed at both of them but mostly at Russell.

“Dansby’s surgery’s over,” Mal says.

“I got bored,” Russell says. 

Lindsey elbows her way between them both. “Well I’m the one stuck in the ED so I get first dibs on whatever rolls through those doors.” There’s an edge to her tone that makes Mal laugh and nudge her lightly in the side.

“I missed you.”

“You act like she died,” Russell complains from her other side. Before he can say anything more, the sirens blare to alert them all that the ambulance is coming. It barrels into the trauma bay seconds later and several nurses, a respiratory therapist, and doctors swarm the vehicle. 

The EMTs fling the doors open and a man with a gaping head wound and what appears to be a piece of his windshield sticking out of his forehead emerges. 

“Dibs!” Lindsey and Russell yell simultaneously. Mal hangs back examining her one-size-too-big gloves. Russell uses his elbows to wedge his way between Lindsey and the gurney. She holds her ground but there’s only so much room near the patient. She ends up by the guy’s feet while Russell holds pressure to the man’s open wound. 

“48-year-old male MVA accident victim. Restrained driver. Open head wound, irregular heartbeat, some small lacs to the upper body. BP holding stable.”

Lindsey drifts back. The guy sits up and tries to fling one of the nurses trying to get an IV off of him. His words are slurred as he tells them he’s fine and to get off of him. 

Russell is forced into helping restrain him. His eyes find Lindsey across the room. She’s leaning back against the far wall with her arms crossed loosely, Mal at her side. A vein pops in his forehead. 

“Thought you wanted him?” He says as they wheel the disgruntled drunk past. 

Lindsey shrugs. “I’ll wait for the real trauma.” Mal tries not to laugh. 

“How’d you know that wasn’t gonna be the trauma?” Lindsey asks her once it’s quiet. It’s just them and a scrub nurse in the trauma bay now. Mal looks to the left and then to the right, her head tilted slightly. 

“It was a guess at first but one look at that guy and you could tell he was fine. Plus even if he wasn’t I wouldn’t want to have to work with Russell anyway.” 

Lindsey has to agree. She’s about to say so when another ambulance peels into the driveway. The driver jumps out and opens the doors and two paramedics push a second gurney onto the sidewalk. 

It’s easy to see that this victim is far worse off. There are bags of blood already hanging and the patient is intubated with one of the EMTs bagging. The monitor hooked up reads the pulse in the forties and the blood pressure as 70/40. There’s blood coating the victim’s clothing which is mostly torn.

“27-year-old female MVA victim, motorcycle vs. SUV. Thrown from the vehicle and tubed at the scene. Massive head wound but suspect internal bleeding as pressure has been unstable throughout. We lost her once in transit and got her back after two rounds of CPR and a dose of epi.” 

Lindsey hears all of this like her head’s underwater. She’s right up near the patient’s face and there’s so much swelling and blood that it’s kind of hard to tell. Her hair’s plastered to her forehead with dried blood and she’s so pale her skin is almost translucent.

But Lindsey would recognize her anywhere.

Somewhere to her left, Mal is asking about identification. 

“We don’t need it.” Lindsey’s own voice sounds like it’s coming from far away. 

“What do you mean? We need to get in contact with her family. We need to find out-”

“We don’t need it because I know who this is.” She’d recognize that leather jacket anywhere. 

Mal grabs her arm. “What do you mean?”

“It’s Emily.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...and that's that! how are we feeling about me now? 
> 
> you can request me at cornerkix_ on twitter (bujt maybe drop a dm to tell me where you're coming from?) for more shenanigans.
> 
> the GOOD news is i'm over halfway done with chapter 11. so that should be happening sooner rather than later. 'til next time.


	11. i will follow you into the dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She just doesn’t feel like she fits anywhere in Portland. It almost felt like home once, when she was with Lindsey. 
> 
> But then they got torn apart and nothing felt like home anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wouldn't get used to this update schedule but i told you guys i wouldn't leave you hanging.
> 
> unbeta'd and thrown through a spellcheck.
> 
> thanks to undercover_martyr for helping brainstorm a big chunk of this chapter and to aprizeforlove for helping catch some of the more obvious typos.
> 
> this chapter has trigger warnings for: some passive thoughts of suicide (nothing graphic), religious overtones/discussions, blood and some body trauma in the OR descriptions.

As she flies down the highway in the dark, Emily doesn’t really know where she’s going. She figures she’ll take the I5 to Tacoma and figure it out from there. She just doesn’t feel like she should be here.

Not in a dark way. At least she doesn’t _ think _ so. 

She just doesn’t feel like she _ fits _ anywhere in Portland. It almost felt like home once, when she was with Lindsey. But then they got torn apart and nothing felt like home anymore. Not Kelley. Not Emma. Not even the stolen moments with Lindsey. 

Maybe she’s not supposed to be here. In Portland. Maybe she’s supposed to be somewhere else.

Emily doesn’t know where that might be and she knows that residency is kind of a binding contract, but there are ways to transfer. Maybe she’d feel more at home back in Virginia or closer to her parents in Georgia. Maybe Florida is calling her name. 

It’s something she’ll look into when she gets back to Portland if she still feels this way tomorrow.

Right now she’s just going to drive. She’s going to run away from her problems just like Kelley said she would, just for a night. Things will be clearer tomorrow. 

She drives northbound in the left lane on the I5 for sixteen miles.

The headlights come into view first. They’re too bright. Too close. 

It happens too fast and slowly all at once. Emily has a second where time slows down. She thinks about turning the bike to the right but she doesn’t. 

And then everything goes black.  
-  
_ 2016 _ _  
_  
“What is _ that_?”

“What’s it look like?” Emily’s yelling. It’s because the motor on the bike is so loud and she can still hear it and the rush of the wind in her ears even as she stands in the parking lot of their apartment complex. She just passed her Step 2 exam and will be going on interviews for residency starting next month. 

Now seems like as good a time as ever to buy a motorcycle. 

Kelley doesn’t seem to agree. She’s still soft and sleepy, wearing one of Emily’s sweatshirts and a frown etched into the lines in her forehead as she sands on the sidewalk. Emily’s still straddling the bike and she _ knows _ she looks good, hair windswept and wearing a leather jacket over her typical white tee and jeans. 

“Are you just gonna stand there?” Emily asks as she runs her fingers through her hair. 

Kelley considers. She looks over her shoulder and thinks about going back to their warm bed. And then she walks over to Emily and stands in front of the motorcycle. She puts her hands over Emily’s on the handlebars and leans across them to kiss her.

“You better not ever ride this deathtrap without a helmet.”

“Never,” Emily says automatically. She squeezes Kelley’s hands and wiggles her eyebrows. “You wanna go for a ride?” 

“Don’t I usually ask you that question?” 

Emily can’t stop laughing. 

-  
Lindsey can’t move. She can’t feel her legs. She can’t hear anything. She can’t see anything other than Emily’s face, her bright eyes and her soft smile and her freckles. Not like this, not bloody and broken.

And then she can. 

She follows the trauma team into the closest exam room without having to think about it. She asks Nurse Tyler for an ultrasound machine and he gets it for her. She settles at Emily’s side and starts checking for abdominal bleeding before anyone can stop her.

She hears the heart monitor blaring. She hears Mal’s voice close by but she sounds far away and she can’t make sense of the words. She hears Tobin enter the trauma room.

“You can’t be in here.” Tobin’s voice sounds clear for some reason. She doesn’t sound pissed but she does sound sad. She isn’t taking care of Emily like she should be. _ That’s _ why general surgery was paged. It’s why Mal’s in the room. It’s why Lindsey’s here. Tobin should be taking care of the patient, of _ Emily_.

Instead, she’s taking care of Lindsey. She rests her hands on Lindsey’s forearms and gives them a squeeze. Lindsey doesn’t feel it. She’s looking over Tobin’s shoulder at all of the monitors Emily’s already hooked up to. Her blood pressure is bottoming out. Her heart is barely beating. She’s not breathing on her own. 

“Lindsey.” 

Tobin moves to hold Lindsey’s face between her hands instead. She forces Lindsey to look at her. “_ Hey_. You can’t be in here.”

Lindsey snaps out of it again. “Yes I can. I’m not family. It’s okay.”

“It’s not because you’re not going to think straight. You’re off until further notice.” 

“You can’t just-”

Tobin cuts her off. “I’m your senior. I can do whatever I want. And you’re not going near patients today.” Tobin presses her thumbs into Lindsey’s cheekbones and then finally lets her go. 

“Dr. Pugh?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re off this case, too. Your only job today is to take care of your friend.”

Lindsey is rooted to her place while people crowd around Emily’s bed. “Linds.” Tobin’s voice sounds far away again. “I got her. Get out of here.” 

Mal has to steer her out of the room from behind. She runs right into someone on the way out. “Sorry,” tumbles from Lindsey’s lips before she can help it and she kind of wishes she had when she realizes who she’s steadying. 

Kelley is standing in front of her, hair mussed and eyes teary. Lindsey lets her go and feels bile rise in her throat when she hears Kelley asking what the hell is going on. 

Alex is right on Kelley’s heels and Lindsey hooks her hand in the pocket of Alex’s white coat before she follows Kelley into the trauma room. Lindsey doesn’t think Emily would want Alex Morgan in her hospital room if she was conscious enough to choose. 

“What?”

“No cardiac issues. Not your case.” 

Alex looks like she wants to say something. Before she has the chance to, one of the nurses is darting out of the room. “I need cardio in here, stat.”

Alex’s eyes flick away from Lindsey and over to Tyler. “I’m cardio. What’s going on?”

“Dr. Heath wants you in here, now.” 

Alex nods. She doesn’t even give Lindsey a second glance. 

“Lindsey? Let’s go.”

Lindsey looks at Mal. She looks really weird and blurry around the edges. “Go where?”

“Anywhere.” 

-  
Rose is napping when she gets paged 911 by Tobin. She remembers Day One, when Tobin told them to run when she ran. She rolls onto her feet and tugs on her shoes. She almost leaves the on-call room without pulling her scrub top over her t-shirt. She tugs it on in the hallway and almost trips over her untied shoelaces. One almost gets caught in the doors as she just makes a _ down _ elevator. 

“Where’s the fire?” Russell asks from behind her. 

Rose ignores him. She triple knots one sneaker and then switches to the other. 

“Hello? Come on, Rosemary. Don’t ignore me.”

“I don’t have to tell you anything,” Rose says as she straightens up and re-ties her hair back out of her face. “But I will because I know it’ll piss you off. I’m going down to help Tobin with the trauma that just rolled in.”

“The drunk guy? He’s fine. Probably gonna go into withdrawal, but he’s fine.”

“You should see the other guy,” Rose says. The elevator opens and she sprints down the hallway to the locker room to change into fresh scrubs and then heads right to the OR. 

Tobin is already in there when she arrives. Rose turns on the hot water and the five minute timer starts. She’s not sure what she’s getting into, just that it’s a pretty severe trauma and that Tobin paged her specifically. Not Lindsey. Not Russell. _ Her_.

It feels good.

So Rose doesn’t want to go into general surgery. It’s still pretty cool to be the best one in her class. 

She glances up and sees that the gallery’s dark. It must be a VIP patient or something. Or just really severe. 

Rose scrubs methodically, carefully, and then she enters the OR. She gowns and gloves and thanks the scrub nurse who does her back tie. As she approaches the table, Rose notices that there’s a drape separating them from the patient, kind of like when they do c-sections. That’s kind of weird but it doesn’t really matter.

“Took you long enough,” Tobin says without looking up from where her hands are working. 

“Sorry. I was sleeping. You told me not to be seen so I...wasn’t.”

“Don’t apologize to me. Get to work.” Tobin’s busy trying to clamp a massively bleeding artery coming from the patient’s spleen. Rose takes the cautery from the nurse and chases after the smaller bleeders. 

“This is Jane Doe. Twenty-seven-years old. Motorcycle driver in an MVA. Ultrasound in the ER revealed internal bleeding and she hasn’t been holding her pressure at all. Any questions?” 

“Can we change the music?” Rose asks. “This playlist is kind of depressing.”

-  
_ 3 months ago _

“I gotta go,” Emily says even as she steps closer to Lindsey instead of towards the door. 

“_Do_ you, though?” Lindsey presses the words to her lips. “You could call in sick.” 

“Lindsey,” Emily murmurs as she breaks the kiss and steps out from the arms encircling her and into her jacket. She fiddles with her keys. She lets Lindsey kiss her in the doorway, on the porch, on the step. 

It’s when Emily almost loses her footing and Lindsey reaches out to catch her that she notices that there’s a motorcycle parked in her driveway. 

“What is _ that_?”

“What?” Emily feigns innocence. “My bike? Yeah, I’m kind of a badass.” 

Lindsey has the audacity to laugh. It makes Emily’s lips purse. She’d complain at her if Lindsey didn’t look so good with her hair piled up in a messy bun and in a sweatshirt that’s a size or two too small and shorts that are criminally short. 

She curses whoever made their schedule for not giving them the same days off. 

“You’re soft, Em. But whatever makes you feel better.”

“Have you ever ridden one?”

“One what?” Lindsey jokes, tucking her hands into her sleeves. “Oh, a motorcycle? No way. Do you know how dangerous those are?”

Emily’s recited statistics to everyone. Her former wife. Her parents. Her sister. They’re on her tongue instantly. “Actually, car accidents are more common.” At Lindsey’s raised brow, she adds that motorcycle accidents are technically more fatal. 

It’s Lindsey’s turn to pout. She walks down the three steps in front of her house and loops her arms loosely around Emily’s waist. “Let me drive you.”

“I’m not giving up the bike even if you do.”

“Okay, but I want coffee. And you’re cute in the morning.” 

Emily can’t say no to that.

-  
Lindsey looks at her watch for the hundredth time and realizes that Mal made her take it off an hour ago. She’s sitting alone on the floor in the hallway and she can’t get her leg to stop bouncing. Her hands keep shaking. She tries to picture Emily’s face but she can’t remember the exact color of her eyes right now. She knows there’s a dusting of freckles along the bridge of her nose but she can’t quite see her nose. Even that soft smile she loves so much is hard to conjure when all she can see is dried blood and bruises. 

Someone sits down next to her. There’s still about six feet between them and Lindsey is still looking straight ahead. She sees a clock on the wall and wonders what the hell is taking so long. It’s been almost three hours and no one’s told her a thing. She knows she’s not family but if she can’t help, the least they could do is keep her updated on Emily’s condition. 

“I tried to get her to trade that thing in _ so _ many times.”

Lindsey isn’t sure who she was expecting to be sitting beside her on the floor, but it sure as hell isn’t Kelley. She doesn’t even have the strength to push herself to her feet to get away from her right now. She just lets her talk. 

“I told her that motorcycles were dangerous and that we could afford nice cars now. I was always worried something like this would happen. Normally I love being right but right now I just wish I wasn’t.” 

Kelley looks like shit.

Normally, she wears dress clothes that make the rest of them look like they’re going to work in pajamas. Once she even showed up in a power suit. When Lindsey turns to look at Kelley, though, she sees that she’s wearing rumpled hospital-issued scrubs. They’re not even the right color. Peds wears pink. _ Emily _ wears pink.

Kelley’s hair is tied up in a knot on top of her head. There are dark circles under her eyes. Her cheeks are red. 

She must expect Lindsey to say something to her because she’s staring at her but Lindsey doesn’t know _ what _ to say to Kelley. She does reach across the gap between them and squeeze Kelley’s knee, just for a second or two. 

Then Mal materializes out of nowhere and forces herself into the space between Lindsey and Kelley. She puts her hand on Lindsey’s knee to force it to stop bouncing and takes one of Lindsey’s hands in hers and threads their fingers together. 

“Did you hear anything?” Lindsey asks. She sees Kelley look over at Mal out of her peripheral vision. 

Mal sighs. “No. They won’t tell me anything, either. I’m not family.”

“I am.” They both look at Kelley. She clears her throat and rubs her nose. “I mean, technically, I’m next of kin. They _ have _ to tell me what’s going on eventually.” 

Lindsey kind of wants to punch her. And, speaking of being punched, Alex arrives next and wedges herself between Mal and Kelley. She takes Kelley’s hand and leans in to whisper to her and Lindsey rolls her eyes so hard she gets a little dizzy. 

“Do you have to be here?”

“I’m trying to be supportive.” 

“Not you. Your mistress.”

“That’s bold,” Alex says. “Coming from you.”

“I didn’t know she was married!”

“That doesn’t make you any less of a mistress…”

“Guys.”

“It kind of does.”

“Guys.”

“It doesn’t.”

“Guys! It doesn’t really matter who’s right or wrong. What matters is Sonny. Right?” Mal rubs her eyes. Lindsey deflates and Alex shuts up and everyone checks their watches except Lindsey. 

Lindsey closes her eyes and tries to remember what color Emily’s eyes are instead.

-  
Emily believes in God. She still goes to church with Emma on Sundays if she’s not working. She’s always believed that when you die, if you’re not a terrible person, you go to heaven. 

She doesn’t think this is heaven. 

It just looks like the hospital except that there are bright white lights blocking out the windows. She’s laying on a gurney in those tunnels where the surgical residents hang out. 

Maybe this is purgatory. 

When she was little, her Sunday School teacher explained that purgatory was an in-between place, somewhere people go when they’re not good enough for heaven or bad enough for hell. 

Emily doesn’t think she’s a bad person but she does think she’s a really gay one. When she was a teenager, she worried that that’s what would land her somewhere else. She’d gotten past that.

Or she _ thought _ she had until now. It’s suddenly really hard to breathe. The logical, doctor part of Emily’s brain knows that’s probably because the version of her that is still alive is close to dying. A fluttering thought hopes that Lindsey’s the one who intubates her; Rose always chips teeth when she does it.

Emily closes her eyes and wills herself to fall asleep and just let whatever’s going to happen happen. She doesn’t need some kind of weird, hypoxia-induced dream to be the last thing she remembers if this ends badly. 

But then the mattress dips and a dog barks and suddenly something is licking her face. 

Emily laughs and sits up to find her childhood dog in her lap. “Sandy?” 

“About time you woke up.” 

Emily looks away from the scruffy golden retriever mix and gapes at her grandfather. He passed away when she and Emma were only six. 

“Pop?”

“What did you expect? A party? Now, what are you doing here, Emmy?” 

“I don’t know.”

He hasn’t aged a day. He levels her with the same no-nonsense expression he used when she and Emma tried to lie to him when they were kids. 

“I think you do. And I think you have to figure that out before you can get out of here, one way or another.” 

-  
“Dammit.” 

Tobin doesn’t usually swear in the OR. It usually means something is going really, really wrong. The amount of blood loss had caused them to take out the patient’s spleen, but her blood pressure is still hanging around 70/40. They’re already transfused four units and it seems like every time they plug one hole, another one comes up. 

“Where’s the source? Lavelle, help me!”

“I’m looking,” Rose says. And she is. She’s scanning the abdominal cavity for any signs of bleeding and clipping the small bleeders along the way, but there’s nothing that could be causing _ this _much blood. 

“You have to move faster or this patient’s gonna die. Is that what you want?”

“No.”

“Prove it.”

“Jesus, Tobin, what’s gotten into you?” You sound like Alex.” Normally, that would be enough to make Tobin scoff and back off, but she’s got fire in her eyes behind her glasses. 

“If this patient dies, _ you _ get to tell her wife.” Under her breath, Tobin adds “And her girlfriend.”

“What?”

“...What?”

Rose looks up from the surgical field for just a second and Tobin glares at her. “What are you talking about? Who is this?”

Tobin doesn’t answer her. Rose freezes up. “Who am I operating on, Tobin? Tell me!”

“Emily.” 

Rose looks down at the open abdominal cavity in front of her. “Who’s Emily?”

“Sonnett. Rose, it’s Sonnett.”

-  
_ 2010 _

“When Dad said you could buy a junker and if you got it running he’d pay for the insurance, somehow I don’t think this is what he had in mind.” Emma is straddling the bike even as she speaks, revving an engine that doesn’t even exist.

Yet.

“Why do you want to drive this thing anyway?” 

Emily glances up from where she’s trying to attach one of the wheels. “Girls dig motorcycles.” When Emma just rolls her eyes, Emily continues. “You know how when you save a goal off the line? Or when you get to play up and score on a cornerkick? That adrenaline rush is the best feeling, right?”

“I mean, I don’t hate it.”

“Well, when you ride one of these babies, it’s like that feeling _ all the time_. And now that I can’t play anymore, I’m trying to find something to replace it.”

“So you think a deathtrap might be it?” 

“Maybe.”

“Can’t you just climb a mountain like a _ normal _person?”

-  
“Lindsey, finally.”

The voice is just similar enough that everyone looks up, but there’s a certain twang to it that Emily just doesn’t have anymore unless she gets really tired or kind of drunk. Emma takes one look at the group of doctors sprawled across the hallway floor and sinks down beside Lindsey. 

“Whoa. She _ is _a twin, huh?” Mal stage whispers poorly.

Emma leans around Lindsey and offers her hair to shake. “Emma Sonnett. And you’re…” She pauses for a second before deciding on “Mal, right?” Mal nods. “Nice to meet you.” 

She completely ignores Alex but says “Hi, Kelley. Long time, no see.” 

Kelley doesn’t say anything but Lindsey sees her stand up anyway. Alex follows her and they start down the hallway together. 

“Bye, Kelley,” Emma calls. Kelley doesn’t reply.

-  
“_Lindsey’s _ Sonnett?”

“Kelley’s Sonnett,” Tobin replies. “How many Sonnetts _ are _ there? Come on, Rose, we have to figure this out.” 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Rose knows she’s talking too loudly. She also thinks the pitch is a little higher than normal. Most of the time, the OR is where Rose feels the most in control but right now, she feels like she’s been asked to fly an airplane. 

“Keep looking.” Tobin tells them to hang another unit of blood. “I wanted your best. I thought if you knew who it was you’d freak out, too.” 

Rose’s jaw clenches beneath her mask. She refocuses and checks the liver for the third time. She lifts it up to expose the posterior aspect of the liver and- “Tobin, look.”

“The portal vein is practically shredded. She needs a graft. Can we get Morgan in here?” The nurse scrambles to get Alex on the phone while Rose clamps the vein. 

“Rose,” Tobin says. “You saved her.”

“Not yet. Besides, she’s still dropping. And look at all that blood in the abdomen. Where else could she be losing blood? We’re missing something. We can’t let her- we need to do something. We have to-”

“Rose,” Tobin’s voice is suddenly more level. “Look.” 

Rose’s eyes are glued to the surgical field. She checks the intestine. Again. She checks the aorta. 

“Rose.”

Emily’s blood pressure is steadily creeping back up. She glances at Tobin. Tobin’s holding one of Emily’s kidney’s in her hand. The entire top portion of it is mangled. 

“What the fuck?”

“We got it. We got her. Hold that clamp.”

Rose does.

-  
In Purgatory or whatever, Emily scratches Sandy behind the ears. 

“Emmy, look at me.” 

She does. Her grandpa’s eyebrows pull together in such a familiar way her chest aches. Or maybe that’s CPR. She can’t really be sure from this side. 

“Why are you here?” 

Emily shrugs. She doesn’t know but only one thought seems plausible. “Because I’m gay, I guess.”

Her grandpa looks around the empty operating room and then holds his hands up. “I don’t see any young ladies here.”

“I just mean,” Emily says, suddenly feeling like she’s sixteen and coming out to her sister for the first time again. “The bible says-”

“You know that’s not what the bible says, Emily Ann. We know you’re not bringing home any boys.”

“I’m married, actually,” Emily hears herself say. “To a woman.”

“Congratulations.” Her granddad raises his eyebrows when Emily doesn’t react. “Or not?” Emily just shrugs. 

“Emily,” he tries again. He sits beside her on the stretcher and pets Sandy’s head. “Why are you here and not there? Why didn’t you react when you saw the headlights?”

“There wasn’t time.” Emily’s voice is a whisper. She’s staring straight ahead. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see him shake his head. 

“You know that’s not true.”

“It wouldn’t have made a difference. It happened too fast.”

“That might be true,” her grandpa agrees. “But you didn’t even try.”

For a few moments, Emily doesn’t say anything. Sandy whines and shifts to lay her head in Emily’s lap. She runs her fingers through the silky fur of the dog’s ear like she used to when she was young and scared. Sandy presses her nose into Emily’s stomach and sighs heavily. 

“I don’t know where I belong.” 

“Emmy, no one knows where they belong at your age.”

Emily stares at him. “You married Nana when you were nineteen.”

He laughs a big, booming laugh that Emily feels in her bones. Despite herself, she smiles at him. “And you think I knew what I was doing? I loved her, sure, but I had three kids before I felt like I knew what I was supposed to do with my life. You’re a doctor. You have friends?”

Emily thinks about Caitlin and Hayley. She thinks about Rose and Mal. She thinks about Christen and Tobin. (She doesn’t think about Lindsey intentionally). 

She nods. 

“You have a good job taking care of sick kids. You have a wife, if you want one. You have more things figured out than you think.”

Emily doesn’t know what to say. She just pets her dog and thinks about Bagel and her chest hurts again. 

She has to go back. 

“But Emily Ann.” She finally looks back at her grandfather. He’s standing in the doorway now, hands in the pockets of his overalls. He looks like he’s going to go. “You have to figure out _ why _ you didn’t do anything. Promise me.”

_ A promise means you can’t break it. _Her sister sounded so much more annoying at six. 

“I promise.”

“Good.” Her grandpa turns to go. She watches his retreating back. As he disappears down the hallway, he whistles and Sandy leaps off the bed to trot after him.

Emily is all alone again.

-  
_ 2017 _

“Alex,” Emily asks. “What are you doing?”

Alex tries and fails not to clench her jaw. She and Kelley lived together before she started dating a medical student and while she likes saving money on rent, days like these make her long for those days. She’s just worked a 36-hour shift, missed Kelley because she’s on nights and Alex is on days, and Emily, on a vacation month, is bored out of her mind. 

“Reading up on my cases for tomorrow.” 

“What do you get to do?”

“Take out somebody’s thyroid because it’s massive and sending them into a. Fib.” 

“Cool.” 

“Yeah but only if I don’t accidentally slip up and kill them. So can you let me study?” 

Emily goes quiet. 

For ten minutes. Then she pops up over Alex’s left shoulder. Alex closes her eyes and counts to ten. “Can I help you?”

“I should be asking _ you _ that question, Al.” Emily wiggles her eyebrows playfully and gives Alex’s shoulder a squeeze. “Take a break. You’ve been staring at the same page for five minutes.”

Pressing her palm to her forehead, Alex breathes out through her nose. “I have to get this down.”

“And you will. But maybe you need to do something else first.” When Alex doesn’t move, Emily puts a hand on each of Alex’s shoulders and rotates them a little bit. “Come on. You know you want to.”

“Fine.”

Five minutes later, Alex is staring at Emily on her motorcycle. 

“I take it back. I’m going back inside.”

“Why?” Emily asks, dangling her spare helmet out between them. “Are you scared?” 

“No.”

“I think you are. I think you’re terrified. Wait til I tell Kel. _ She’s _ gone for rides with me.”

“I bet she has.”

“Alex, how do you feel when you’re in the operating room?” 

Alex thinks about it. “I feel like I’m on top of the world.”

“I feel like that when I ride the bike. Let me show you.” 

Alex caves. Emily smiles. “Only because anything Kelley does, I do.”

“I appreciate the gesture, Al, but no thank you.”

“Shut up.”

_ \- _ _  
_“Are you sure you’re okay to do this?” Tobin asks for at least the third time as Alex gowns and gloves. 

“For the last time, yes I’m sure.”

“Okay, because if you fuck this up Kelley will never forgive you.”

“Oh, so this is about Kelley now?” The way Alex says it, it’s not really a question. She looks away from Tobin and down at the surgical field instead. 

It’s a mess. Tobin and Rose have already removed Emily’s spleen and right kidney. The field is clear, for now, but only because of the large clamp on the portal vein leading from the liver. 

“An autograft would be better but I doubt Emma’s going to sacrifice herself here.”

“Don’t we usually use cadavers for that?”

“Yeah. Why couldn’t we use the saphenous vein like we do for other grafts, Dr. Lavelle?” Alex is already asking their scrub nurse for a synthetic vein graft instead. 

Rose’s eyebrows pull together. She glances at Tobin like she’s not sure why Alex is asking her questions while their friend is open on the table. 

“Just because we’re taking care of someone we know,” Alex says while she points to the clamp. “Doesn’t mean I’m not a teacher anymore. Why not the saphenous?”

“Because,” Rose holds her breath as she takes the clamp off of the portal vein. Blood starts pouring into the field and she chases it with the suction. “Because it’s too small in diameter? The liver drains a lot of blood and it’s so important in filtering. The saphenous wouldn’t hold, would it?”

“I ask the questions. I don’t answer them,” Alex says as she works to fit the graft into place. She works quickly and efficiently, careful to make her knots tight. 

Rose is quiet while she sets the artificial vein in place, but once it’s in and Emily’s blood pressure is stable, she can’t help herself. 

“Was I right, though? About the saphenous?”

Alex takes off her gown and gloves. She walks to the OR door. She opens it and is halfway out of the room before she turns back around. 

“You were right. Don’t get cocky.”

Rose waits until Alex has left the room to beam down at the table. 

Tobin just rolls her eyes. 

“Hey, Tobin, can I close?”

-  
Kelley hasn’t left Emily’s side since she got out of surgery. It’s been hours and they haven’t been able to take her off of the ventilator because she isn’t able to breathe on her own. Kelley stares at the monitors. Her blood pressure has evened out to 110/70. Her heart rate is steady. They’ve hooked up EEG machine with a bunch of electrodes to her scalp and it’s showing good brain function.

So why isn’t she waking up?

“You’re so stubborn,” Kelley tells her, smoothing Emily’s hair away from her face. “You’ve proven your point. Wake up and tell everybody you told them so. And get rid of that _ stupid _ bike.” 

Nothing. No laugh. No crinkle of the eyes. The brain waves don’t even spike.

Kelley keeps talking anyway. “Bagel will never forgive you, you know. She hates me. And she loves you. She loves you so much. Maybe...if- _ when _ you wake up, maybe she should be your dog.”

She takes Emily’s hand in both of hers. It’s cool to the touch and that scares her. She swallows around a lump in her throat. “Alex and I aren’t...we’re not. I just thought you should know that.” 

Rose is hanging around the nurses’ station in the ICU keeping an eye on Emily’s monitors...and Emily’s wife. She presses her tongue against her cheek. She checks her watch. She sees Lindsey hiding in the smaller nurses’ station down the hall.

So she does something about it. She finds the insurance rep and sends her in to take Kelley down to the finance department and fill out the stack of forms that had gotten ignored when Emily was brought in. 

As soon as Kelley leaves the room, Lindsey goes to see her.

Emily looks like herself again, face clean and hair out of her face. Lindsey can count her freckles if she sits close enough but she still can’t quite remember her eyes. She hopes they open soon. 

“Hey.” Lindsey’s voice is thick with a combination of disuse and unshed tears. She hesitates in the doorway for a second. 

Emily looks like herself again but she looks too small in her hospital bed, hooked up to IVs and machines tracking her heart rate and helping her breathe. Lindsey steps into the room and slides the glass door and then pulls the curtains behind her. The staff all know Emily. _ Everyone _ at Providence Hospital knows Emily.

They love her, too. 

Lindsey knows that people are hovering because they care. Emily has touched so many lives in her short time in Portland and people are worried about her. But Lindsey just wants some privacy for what she’s going to say.

She doesn’t sit. She stands at Emily’s side and takes her hand in both of her own. Her pulse beats reassuringly against her thumb and it makes it a little easier to talk even though her tongue feels sandpapery. 

“Hey, you. I missed you this morning.” 

Emily obviously doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t really react at all. “Em, I don’t know if you can hear me right now, but I’m right here, okay? I’m not going anywhere.” She brings Emily’s hand to her mouth and presses her lips lightly to the palm. “I might not be here when you wake up because...your wife might be. But I’m not going anywhere, okay? I’m here for you. Whatever you need.”

The room is eerily quiet except for the steady thrum of the heart monitor and the noise of the ventilator breathing for Emily. It makes her chest ache to think too hard about Kelley telling them to do everything they could. She and Emily didn’t talk about it but she doesn’t think she’d want to be kept alive by machines. She thinks Emily would want to _ live _.

She hopes she gets the chance to.

Lindsey uses her foot to drag the chair beside the bed closer and drops into it. She never went to church as a kid. Her parents were the kind of people who told her God exists but it was always some kind of weird, shapeless being. She thinks she believes in heaven but she doesn’t know what you have to do to get there. 

She thinks if anyone deserves to make it there, it’s Emily. 

Lindsey drops her head and keeps her hands clasped around Emily’s. She closes her eyes. “I know we don’t talk much,” she says to God or herself. She’s not really sure. “But I know what I want now. I want Emily. I’ve always wanted Emily. And if you help her stay here, I’ll get my shit together. I’ll do whatever you want. Go to church or or...I don’t know. Work at homeless clinics on the weekends. Just bring her back to me.” 

The heart monitor keeps beeping.

The ventilator keeps pumping.

No bright light shines down. There’s no voice from above. There’s just sputtering and coughing and then Emily’s squeezing her hand.

Lindsey jumps to her feet and reaches for the call button. “Em? Baby, it’s okay. You’re okay. You still have the tube in your throat. Breathe.” She’s not sure how her voice stays steady, but looking into Emily’s eyes (blue, but they look a little gray in this shitty hospital lighting) makes it easier. 

Emily holds her gaze even as Rose and one of the nurses bustle into the room. She watches Lindsey while they hover near her head and she doesn’t even seem to listen to Rose when she tells her they’re going to remove the breathing tube.

“It’s gonna hurt,” Lindsey says and Emily kind of nods as best she can. “Cough for them, Emily. That’s it.” 

Emily coughs, sputters, and inhales sharply when Rose pulls the breathing tube out. Tears leak out of the corners of Emily’s eyes. Lindsey feels her own cheeks are wet, too, and blinks the tears away. 

“How’s that?” Rose asks Emily. Her voice is weirdly soft. Lindsey kind of wants to hug her. “You feel okay?” Rose bends down to pull the oxygen tubing out of the wall and positions it so that Emily can use it to help her breathe. 

Emily doesn’t speak for a couple of minutes. She keeps looking at Lindsey, though, and squeezes Lindsey’s hand. 

“I’m gonna leave you guys alone,” Rose decides, practically dragging Nurse Tyler out of the room with her. She pats Lindsey’s shoulder as she passes. 

Once they’re gone, Lindsey wipes her eyes. 

Emily sits up a little bit. She presses her fingers into Lindsey’s wrist. She tries to talk but it’s like something’s stuck in her throat. 

“What is it? Does something hurt? Do you need something? Should I call somebody?”

Emily shakes her head. She purses her lips. She tries again. When she speaks, her voice is barely a whisper. She only manages one word: “Water.” 

Lindsey can’t help it. She cracks up with the kind of rib-cracking laughter she hasn’t felt in _ so _ long. Emily’s eyebrows knit together in that concerned way she does and Lindsey’s smile is so wide her cheeks kind of hurt. 

“You sound like shit,” Lindsey tells her. 

Emily’s middle finger twitches a little bit but she’s too tired to flip her off properly. 

Lindsey gets her a glass of water and holds the straw to her lips, holding the cup just out of Emily’s reach when she tries to grab for it herself. “Let somebody help you.”

Emily does, but she rolls her eyes as she drains the entire cup of water and then asks for another one. She gets halfway through the second cup before letting go.

She looks at Lindsey. She takes her hand back. She talks again.

“I need Kelley.” 

It comes out kind of like a wheeze. Lindsey knows every word is difficult for her and that it’ll get better with time. 

It doesn’t make that sentence hurt any less. 

She nods, leans down to press a kiss to Emily’s forehead, and leaves before she starts crying again. 

Rose is in her face as soon as she’s in the hallway. 

“So?” She asks, drawing out the vowel sound and wiggling her eyebrows. “How’d it go?”

Lindsey doesn’t answer her. She just tells Rose that Emily wants her wife and leaves the floor.

-  
Kelley hugs her as soon as she sees that she’s sitting up and awake and it kind of hurts. Emily feels mildly bad about pushing her away and gives her a smile that really looks more like a grimace. “‘m sore.” Her voice is starting to come back to her and sound a little bit more normal, she thinks. 

“Oh, yeah, of course. Do you need something else to drink? Did they feed you yet? Do you want more pillows or maybe-”

“Kel.” 

Kelley shuts up immediately and forces a smile that doesn’t really meet her eyes. She rests a hand over Emily’s. “Sorry. You just really scared me. I thought I lost you.”

Emily’s stomach hurts. It hurt before because of the splenectomy and the nephrectomy and all the scarring but she kind of feels like she also got punched in the stomach. She takes a big breath and her oxygen saturation wavers for a second, which makes the nurses rush over.

“I’m good, guys,” she tells them when three heads peek around the curtain. “Just practicing for my underwater therapy.” She gives them a thumbs up and they disperse which means she has to look back at Kelley.

Kelley’s looking at the floor. She looks...older, Emily notices. There are laugh lines at the corners of her mouth and wrinkles by her eyes when she smiles, but she’s not smiling now. She’s frowning deeply and it makes her forehead crease. 

“You’re gonna get wrinkles,” Emily tells her. 

Kelley glances up at her. “What is it, Em?”

“I almost died today. Actually, Rose says I _ did _ die. Just for a second. Flatline and everything.” She pauses to roll her eyes and then says “Alex brought me back. Of course.”

Kelley kind of flinches at _ Alex _ and that pushes Emily forward. “I almost died and it made me realize that we shouldn’t settle.” 

Now Kelley looks like she got punched in the stomach. Emily leans forward in bed. She has to duck her head to catch Kelley’s eye. 

“We tried. Right? We tried and it didn’t work. Why are we trying to fit into boxes we don’t fit into anymore?”

Kelley looks at the ceiling and bites her lip. Emily pretends not to notice when a couple of tears escape anyway. 

“So that’s it?” Kelley wonders. “We’re done?” 

“Haven’t we been?” 

Kelley laughs but it’s clear that she doesn’t think it’s funny at all.

“Kel.” When she doesn’t look at her, Emily tries again. “Kelley, we were happy. Before. You made me _ so _happy. And I think maybe I made you happy, too.” She tentatively hooks Kelley’s pinky with hers and keeps talking because Kelley doesn’t pull away from her. “But we haven’t been in that place in a long time. I think I can be happy again. I think you can be, too. But I don’t think it’ll be together.”

Kelley takes her hand away. “Are you asking for a divorce?” 

Emily sighs. “I...yeah. Yeah, I guess I am.”

Kelley nods. She twirls her wedding band around her finger once, twice, three times. She takes it off and presses it into Emily’s palm. 

She stands, leans down to press a kiss to Emily’s forehead, and leaves before she starts crying again. 

-  
“When I got my appendix out last year,” Emma sats as she breezes into the room and sits on the end of Emily’s bed. “Could you tell something was wrong? Like, do you have the weird twin thing, too?”

Emily shrugs. “I mean, I had phantom stomach pains and had to miss a Pulmonology final, so yeah.”

“Well you almost gave me a heart attack today, Son. Don’t _ do _ that.” 

Emma looks like she’s going to cry so _ Emily _ starts crying. She’s already dehydrated and she’s sick of crying. She kind of just wants to sleep. 

Emma gets it. Emily can tell she has something else to say but she bites it back to save for later. They’re definitely not done talking about Lindsey, but Emily’s kind of glad to escape that conversation for now. 

She leans forward enough to press her forehead to Emily’s and gives both of her hands a squeeze. “If you ever leave me,” Emma says as she drops her head to Emily’s shoulder instead. “I’ll kill you.”

“Got it.”

-  
The ICU is loud.

There are heart monitors and respirators always on. There are codes and people yelling. There are people -patients and their families- crying. 

It’s hard to sleep.

Emily looks at the clock. It’s just after midnight. She’s probably not even still in the hospital, but she’d _ said_…

She hits the nurse call button. When her nurse arrives, she smiles apologetically. “Can you do me a favor?”

The nurse clicks her tongue. 

“Depends what it is.”

“Can you page Dr. Horan for me?”

-  
Rose and Mal tried to get her to go home hours ago, but when she’d refused, they’d all camped out in the tunnels instead. Rose is sleeping on a pile of charts with her head in Lindsey’s lap. Lindsey has a textbook propped open at her side. 

Mal’s on the gurney next to them on her phone. She can’t stop smiling. 

“Dansby’s up late.”

Mal’s cheeks get hot. “It’s not Dansby.” 

“You suck at lying.”

“He’s not my patient anymore.”

Lindsey shuts her book, which makes Rose shift and curl a hand into the front of Lindsey’s shirt. “If he comes back here for his transplant, he will be. And _ then _ it’ll be illegal.”

Mal shrugs. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“What does _ that_-” Before Lindsey can finish her question, her pager goes off. She frowns at it while Rose springs to a crumpled but upright position beside her looking rumpled and still half asleep. 

When Lindsey realizes it’s the ICU, she jumps to her feet. She’s halfway down the hall before she turns around and yells to Mal that they’re not done with this conversation.

“What conversation?” Rose asks while she wipes her mouth.

Mal thinks about how weird Rose gets when they talk about Dansby. She answers with “Nothing.”

-  
“What’s wrong? Why didn’t you page Dr. Lavelle? You know I’m not on this case, Sharon. I’m not supposed to help.”

The nurse looks at her kindly and lowers her glasses down the bridge of her nose. “Dr. Horan, the patient in 7 is asking for you. Well, she’s asking for _ Lindsey_.” 

Lindsey blinks. She bites back a smile, thanks Sharon and then makes her way to Emily’s room. She’s sitting up in bed watching a Parks & Recreation rerun. She smiles tentatively when she sees Lindsey and mutes the television.

“Hey, stranger.” 

“Hey yourself.” 

Lindsey isn’t sure where to stand. She’s kind of surprised Kelley isn’t there but she’s not mad about it. She goes to sit in the chair beside the bed and Emily’s mouth quirks downward. 

“Do you want me to hang out until she gets back?”

Emily shakes her head. Lindsey hovers awkwardly at the foot of the bed. “You’re confusing, Emily Sonnett.” 

Emily lifts her left hand and wiggles her fingers in a wave and that’s when Lindsey notices there’s no ring. She raises her eyebrows. 

“We can talk about it later,” Emily says. She turns the volume back up on the TV. “This is a good one. But I can’t sleep. Will you stay?”

Lindsey’s crossing the room before Emily even finishes talking. She slips off her shoes and climbs into bed beside Emily, careful to avoid the IV line and all of the other wires that are still hooked up to her. She curls her body around Emily’s and lets her use her as a pillow. 

The heart monitor picks up a faster beat and Lindsey presses a smile into the crown of Emily’s head. Her pulse evens out and slows. They watch Leslie Knope try and convince Ron Swanson to do something he clearly doesn’t want to do.

During the commercial, Emily looks at her. “Did you mean what you said before?”

Lindsey blinks awake. She’d been so close to sleep that it takes her a moment to process the words. “Which time?”

“_I’m not going anywhere. Whatever you need.” _ It upturns on the end like a question. 

Lindsey is suddenly wide awake. She turns enough that they’re facing each other in bed. “You heard that?” Emily nods. “What else did you hear?”

“Doesn’t matter. Did you mean it?”

Lindsey nods. “I meant everything I said before. I’ll be right here if that’s what you want. Whatever you need.”

Emily seems satisfied. She gets quiet and cuddles into Lindsey’s side and focuses back on the television. 

Just before Lindsey falls asleep, Emily says “I’ll hold you to it.”

-  
It had taken two hours, a hot water bottle, and three different cans of puppy food to get the dog Emily had rescued to be quiet and even then it had lasted all of five minutes. It wasn’t until Emma had brought Bagel over from Kelley’s that the puppy had stopped whimpering. He clung to her like a shadow and they fell asleep curled up together at the end of Emma’s bed. 

Emma is finally asleep, too.

Until she isn’t. 

The doorbell cuts through the quiet and the dogs start barking and they won’t stop. Groaning, Emma sits up and stares into the dark. Maybe if she doesn’t answer whoever it is will go away. 

The dogs stop barking. She glances at the clock on her bedside table. It’s just after midnight. Normally if someone rang her doorbell at this time of night, she’d assume it was her sister. But her sister is in the hospital so it can’t be Emily.

Emma lays back down.

The doorbell rings again three times in quick succession. The dogs start barking again. Emma gets out of bed and shuffles down the stairs with the dogs on her heels. 

She flings the door open. “What?” 

“Emma Jane.” The words die on Emma’s tongue when she realizes her mother is the one standing on the other side of the door. “Do you want to tell me why Kelley O’Hara was the one to call me and tell me that one of my daughters is in the hospital or should I wake Emily up?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so there you have it! i'm @cornerkix_ on twitter and i yell more there.


	12. the heart of the matter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She’s not sure what she’s expecting but it’s not a thread of messages from Emily.
> 
> i cant wait to get outta here
> 
> mom won’t leave the room its weird
> 
> neither will emma
> 
> im free!!!!
> 
> d’you wanna have dinner???

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey everyone! so between my stand-alone fics i'm trying to focus on the multi-chapters i already have before starting anything new. (spoiler: i said i was only gonna focus on grey's fic but i think THGAU will havee an update next week sometime so i lied). 
> 
> plan is for this fic to encompass the gang's intern year. ish. so we have a ways to go yet.
> 
> unbeta'd as usual. 
> 
> hope you guys are ready for some new cast members. the first one shows up in this chapter and they're based on a pretty prominent grey's character, sort of. 
> 
> there are some descriptions of surgery and also an almost-surgical procedure in here but nothing too graphic, i don't think?
> 
> have fun!

“Emily Sonnett, twenty-seven-year-old female post-op day number six from emergent splenectomy, right nephrectomy, and synthetic portal vein graft placement after sustaining her injuries in an MVA. Emily had-”

“Who’s Emily?” Rose interrupts. 

Tobin shoots her a look as if to say _ stop being a dick _ without having to say anything at all.

“Dr. Sonnett,” Emily says helpfully from her spot in bed. She’s sitting sideways with her feet dangling and is dressed in comfortable clothes including a too-big Yale sweatshirt that Rose keeps staring at. “I don’t think we’ve met.”

The tall blonde sandwiched between Lindsey and Mal looks a little lost. She glances up from her notepad and blinks several times. She’s also wearing green scrubs which are a dead giveaway that she’s new even if Emily _ didn’t _ know Lindsey’s entire intern class. 

“Most people just call me Sonnett. First year peds when I’m not moonlighting as a patient.” 

“Dr. Mewis. Sam. Surgical intern from Cary Medical Center.”

“I know.” Emily replies with a smile. She exchanges a glance with Lindsey before clearing her throat. “These guys know me so they’re being assholes, but it’s nice to meet you, Sam. Now,” she says, rubbing her palms together. “Who’s gonna give me the good news?” 

She’s looking right at Lindsey, who hasn’t been involved in her care at all. It had been deemed a conflict of interest. But that doesn’t mean that she hasn’t spent every night with Emily when she wasn’t working. 

“We’re waiting on your morning labs-”

“Typical.”

“But if everything’s clear you get to go home today.”

Emily’s smile doesn’t quite meet her eyes as she throws the team a thumbs-up. 

Tobin herds them into the hallway but Lindsey hangs back. It’s a rare morning where Emma isn’t already camped out in her sister’s room, so Lindsey figures she should seize it. She flops heavily on the end of Emily’s bed and arches her eyebrows. 

“So?”

“So what?” Emily plays it off. 

“You’ve been dying to get home and now you’re not excited. What gives?”

Emily plays with a hole in the blanket when she answers. “It’s not like I really have anywhere to _ go _.” The gears are turning in Emily’s head. Lindsey can tell that there’s more she’s not saying, but she bites her tongue -and her bottom lip. 

Lindsey nudges her shoulder lightly. “Hey.” When Emily keeps staring at the hole in the comforter, Lindsey grabs her hand to make her stop. “You’re always welcome at my place.” 

It’s Emily’s turn to arch her eyebrows. 

Lindsey backtracks. “I mean, Rose technically moved into your room but she can share with Mal. They sleep together most nights anyway.”

“Really?” 

“...not like that.” 

Emily reaches for the book on her bedside table. “I’ll think about it.”

“You better.”

-  
“Like I don’t have enough trouble getting cases with Lindsey Horan in my program,” Russell complains as they make their way down the hall towards the coffee cart. “Now I’ve got a second prodigy surgeon in my class. It’s like they don’t _ want _ the rest of us to learn how to operate.”

The four of them are walking in two lines of two, Rose beside Russell and Mal and Lindsey a step behind. 

Rose scoffs.

“Just because you’re not good enough to earn surgeries with the Great Lindsey Horan in the building doesn’t mean the rest of us aren’t up for a challenge. Right, Mal?”

Mal is staring at her phone. Lindsey nudges her in the side and she glances up like she’s been caught. “...what?”

“Nevermind. Maybe those of us not dating our patients are up for the challenge. Right, Lindsey?”

Lindsey tucks her hands into her pockets. “I think you guys are making too big a deal out of this. Their programs got shut down. I’m sure they’re just happy to have somewhere to learn.” 

Russell rolls his eyes. “Oh, great,” he says to Lindsey’s retreating back as she heads back to get Sam, who seems to have taken a wrong turn. “Now they’re teaming up.” 

He orders his coffee and pays. Rose orders for her and Mal and pays for them both while Mal continues texting. 

“I don’t get why you’re not pissed about this,” Russell says to her.

Rose looks right at him while she adds the exact amount of cream and sugar to Mal’s coffee and picks it and her own cup of black coffee up. “Because,” she turns around to give Mal her drink and earns a smile for her efforts “I’m actually confident in my surgical skills.”

-  
“Hey,” Lindsey waves awkwardly as she approaches Sam. She feels a kindred spirit in her. While Lindsey’s parents are both famous doctors in their fields, there’s an entire prestigious award in surgical research named after Sam’s grandfather. 

For the first time since she set foot in Providence Hospital, Lindsey’s not the most famous doctor who hasn’t actually _ done _ anything yet. Sam probably already had to prove herself in the hospital where she’d started residency and then the hospital closed, displacing residents from multiple specialties. 

Lindsey can’t even imagine. She’d been following along on Reddit and the residents had been dispersed to hospitals across the country. Sam had to pack up and move from North Carolina to Portland with three days’ notice. 

Sam looks relieved. “Hi. I keep getting all turned around here. First days, right?”

Lindsey nods. “On my first day,” she says as she and Sam start walking towards the cafeteria. “I was almost late because I went out and got drunk the night before.” 

Sam chuckles goodnaturedly. “It happens.”

“Sure, but most of the time you don’t run into your one night stand in the hospital on day one of your internship.” 

Lindsey doesn’t know why she said that. It’s probably because she hasn’t been getting much sleep lately. Since she’s been reinstated from her suspension, she’s taken a lot of night shifts in the ER to try and prove that she’s ready for the operating room, but Tobin hasn’t let her set foot in an OR yet. When she’s _ not _ working, she’s staying with Emily and wondering what’s going on inside her head. 

Sam breaks the silence. “I showed up at the wrong hospital my first day, so I get it.” 

Lindsey decides she likes Sam Mewis. 

-  
Lindsey doesn’t like Sam Mewis as much when Tobin tells her to tag along with Lindsey on her case today. 

Tobin’s focused entirely on a set of CT scans pulled up on the computer in front of her. “There’s a little boy in the ER with a probable appendicitis, but he’s being treated for leukemia. What’s your treatment plan there?”

Lindsey answers without missing a beat. “IV antibiotics and monitoring to start. Serial CBCs and if his white count skyrockets it’s the OR.” 

“Cool. You and Sam can take that.” 

Color creeps up Lindsey’s neck and into her cheeks. She’s glad that Tobin has already sent Rose, Mal, and Russell to their assignments for the day. “I’m fine. I think I can deal with a possible appy on my own.”

Tobin’s still staring at her computer. Lindsey braces a hand on the desk and leans over so that she’s talking closer to Tobin’s ear. 

“She’s a doctor, too, Tobin. Don’t you think she can handle her own patient?”

Tobin gives her an unimpressed look. “Yeah. I’m making sure _ you _ can handle your own patient. You haven’t operated in a couple of _ months _, dude. I gotta make sure you’re ready.” She spins around in her wheeled chair and tips her head to the side as she watches Lindsey process. 

“Besides, Mewis has gotten lost twice already. Two birds, one rock or whatever.”

-  
“Dr. Morgan.” Rose appears in front of her. “I finished your discharge summaries, ordered the stress test for the lady in 308, and got your coffee.” She pushes the to-go cup across the counter to Alex who pops the lid off to check if it’s been made the way she likes before taking a long sip. 

“Okay,” Alex replies, replacing the lid and warming her hands on either side of the cup. “But I already have an intern today. Dr. Heath sent Dr. Pugh down earlier.” 

“I know.”

“So what are you doing here?” Alex frowns at an ER note from last night on the screen.

“I was _ hoping _ that since I’m technically on an elective there might be something I could do to help you?” 

Alex looks up at her and narrows her eyes. She clasps her hands in front of her and watches Rose for a few moments. It’s kind of fun to watch interns squirm but Rose isn’t as easily shaken as the rest of them. She has her feet planted firmly and a neutral but interested expression on her face. 

It’s intriguing.

“You can help Dr. Pugh take my patient down to echo. If you two can figure out what’s going on with her one of you can fix it.” 

Rose bites the inside of her cheek to hide a grin. “Thank you so much. I won’t let you down.”

“Thank me when you get the answer right.”

“I always get it right.” 

She catches Mal and the patient just as they’re stepping into the elevator and barely slips inside before the doors clang shut. She’s still catching her breath when Mal asks her what she’s doing. 

“Alex says I can come down to ultrasound with you guys. Whichever one of us figures out the diagnosis gets to fix it.”

Mal frowns while Rose leans back against the elevator wall. “Why do you have to turn everything into a competition?”

Rose blinks at her. “Uh, because it kind of is? There are only so many surgeries and procedures in this hospital. Like it or not we’re _ always _ competing.” 

Mal sighs. “Well you don’t have to compete with _ me _. Marie is my patient.”

-  
Lindsey doesn’t like cancer cases. It’s depressing enough in general, but when it’s a kid it’s even worse. She doesn’t know how her mom does this every day. For a while, she’d avoided peds cases in general, but ever since Emily...well, she spends time in peds as much as she can now. She’s used to mostly healthy kids with something bad that needs taken out or breaks that need fixed. 

Kids with terminal illness but other problems that might kill them faster aren’t her favorite thing. 

“What are we doing?” Sam asks as they hover outside of Michael’s hospital room. She has the decency to keep her voice low. 

“I’m bracing myself,” Lindsey says and reaches back to tighten her ponytail. “This kid’s sick.”

“They’re all sick,” Sam replies unhelpfully. “But we’re here to help.” 

Before Lindsey can stop her, Sam walks into the room. 

Michael is four. His eyes are sunken and his skin is paper thin. He’s lost all of his hair from the chemo. And he smiles wide with dimples when Sam walks into his room and asks him the names of the mountain of stuffed animals on his bed. 

He’s halfway through explaining the backstory to Perry the penguin when Lindsey feels brave enough to join them. 

Sam looks up from Perry for just a second. She’s sitting on the end of Michael’s bed and she looks back to him. “This is my friend Lindsey. She’s a really good doctor and if we do have to go in there and take out your appendix, she’s going to do it.”

Lindsey stares at her. That seems like an assumption but the confidence Sam has in her, even though they’ve just met, makes Lindsey stand a little taller. She waves at Michael and he waves back. 

“What’s your favorite an-mal?” He questions.

Lindsey has to think about it. Finally she decides on “Dog.”

Michael produces a truly realistic looking golden retriever plush. “This is Buddy. He’s my best friend.”

“Well if you want,” Lindsey says. “He can come with you wherever you go while you’re here.”

“Even if I have to have surg-ry?”

“Yep. I can make that happen.” 

“Wow! Thanks, Lindsey!”

“No problem, dude.” 

-  
“What’s going on with her?”

Mal looks at her from across the gurney. Their patient is dozing between them so Rose feels okay about asking. It would be rude if she was conscious. Mal just scoffs at her.

“What?”

Mal’s hands curl around the railing on the stretcher. “Don’t you think you should have done some research before you tried to steal my case?” 

Rose blinks. “I mean, Alex just threw me into it and we have limited time here. If I wanna win, I have to figure it out and there’s limited time since we’re already on the way to imaging. And I always want to win.”

“This isn’t a competition, Rose. This woman’s sick and she’s fighting for her life here.” 

Rose looks down at her. She’s snoring quietly. The monitor she’s hooked up to is clicking away at a steady, but slow 55 beats per minute. Then, suddenly, it isn’t. There’s no blaring alarm or anything because it’s a remote monitor, but Rose’s face pales anyway. 

“Uh, you sure about that?” 

Mal looks away from Rose and at the screen. “Shit.” She reaches down to replace the leads on her chest and prays they were just off. The flatline remains...and then it doesn’t. A round p wave and a peaked QRS complex appears and the number 65 flashes on the screen. 

“Don’t do that,” Rose tells the patient, who’s still asleep. 

“Her name’s Marie,” Mal says, looking at Rose again. “She has eight kids and thirteen grandkids. She has four great-grandchildren. She lost her husband last year.” 

“Okay, so what’s wrong with her?”

“They’re _ people _, Rose, not cases to cut up.”

“I mean, technically, they’re both…” 

Mal is about to argue back. Rose can tell by the way she sets her jaw. Before she can, though, the lights flicker and then die. The elevator car screeches to a halt. An alarm blares. 

“What the fuck?” 

Rose presses herself into the corner of the elevator and folds herself as small as possible. “This is why I take the stairs.” Her voice has lost its edge. Mal looks at her with concern and reaches over Marie to jab the _ emergency _ button. 

“It’s gonna be fine. There are protocols for this.” 

Marie flatlines again. This time, she doesn’t come back when they replace the wires. 

-  
Emma breezes into her room and throws herself on the end of Emily’s bed. “Hey. We only have like two minutes and that’s only because the elevators are down and I sprinted up here.” She pauses a second to take a huge gulp of air and Emily hands her a glass of water. 

Emma takes the glass but doesn’t drink. “You can stay with me. Obviously. But you should know something before you do.” Once she gets the words out she does take a large sip.

“Are you sleeping with Kelley now?”

Emma sputters on her water. She starts coughing loudly enough that a nurse pokes her head in the doorway and looks alarmed until she realizes it’s Emily’s twin and not Emily herself becoming hypoxic. 

Emily waves her off. “I got this.” She hits her sister between the shoulderblades with her palm. Nurse Patty gives her a disapproving look but disappears. 

“What’s up?”

“Mom’s here.”

“Yeah, I know. She’s practically been living here.” Emily rolls her eyes and reaches for her phone.

Emma knocks it out of her hand. “Mom’s insisting on _ staying here _ until you’re “back on your feet again.”” She punctuates it with air quotes. 

Emily stares at her. “What does that even-”

Their mom appears in the doorway with her jacket hanging off one shoulder and her glasses askew. Emily can hear her breathing from across the room. She exchanges a look with Emma and clears her throat.

“Hi, Mama.”

She ignores her entirely. “Emma Jane, it's rude to leave your mother behind. You know I get lost in this place. It’s like a maze.”

“Try working here.”

Emma presses her lips together to try and keep from laughing. “Sorry, Ma.” 

Jane straightens her coat and sniffs as she walks further into the room. “Now,” she says, picking up and rifling through a stack of gifts and notes on Emily’s bedside table. Emily tries not to react as she lingers a moment too long on a handwritten one from Lindsey that had arrived attached to a KitKat bar. 

_ For the next time you need a break. -L _

“When are you getting out of here?”

“Well, I have to be cleared by the surgical team first…”

“Have they been here already?”

“They do rounds at like six in the morning, Mom.” Emma rolls her eyes. 

Jane ignores her. “Have they been?”

“Yeah but they’re waiting on my bloodwork.”

“Which has been fine for two days now. I’m going to go find the charge nurse.”

“Mama please just let everyone do their jobs. Everyone’s busy.”

“I’m busy too and I’ve dropped everything to be out here.”

Emily sinks lower on her bed. “Nobody asked you to.”

Emma shakes her head, just slightly. Emily doesn’t even look at her.

“I’m fine, Ma. You can go.”

“You’re not fine, Emily. You drove that motorcycle into oncoming traffic.”

Thankfully, she doesn’t have to acknowledge that because Nurse Patty knocks on the door. She has a stack of papers and a smile with her. 

“I’ve got your discharge paperwork!”

“About time.”

Emily shoots Patty an apologetic look. Patty grins sympathetically. “Let’s get you taken care of, Dr. Sonnett.”

Emily tries not to think about how she’d trust most of the people in this hospital to do that more than her own mother.  
-  
“What the fuck?” Rose repeats, still frozen in place in the corner. Mal practically leaps across Marie to reach for her and Rose holds up her hands defensively. “What the hell, Mal?”

“Give it to me,” Mal growls, fingers curling around the stethoscope still dangling from Rose’s neck. Mal’s is sitting on the counter on the fifth floor nurse’s station. Eventually Rose seems to realize what Mal’s trying to do and takes the stethoscope off. Mal puts the earpieces in and places the bell on Marie’s chest. 

“She’s got a pulse. Heart sounds are muffled.” Mal puts the stethoscope around her own neck since Rose is still rooted to the spot. She turns the patient’s head to the side and frowns at how full her neck veins look. “That’s not great.”

“Tamponade? She’s not gonna be able to breathe for long.” Rose finally seems to realize they have to do something or this woman is going to die in a broken elevator. She slips along the side of the gurney towards the elevator doors and tries prying them apart with her hands. 

“I don’t think that’s gonna work. Do you have any supplies on you?” 

Rose looks at Mal who is already lowering the railing on the bed to give herself more room. Rose pats the pockets of her white coat and comes up with a reflex hammer, a set of mismatched pens she stole from Lindsey and Russell, and a suture kit. 

Mal snags the kit and tears it open with her teeth. Rose would comment on that if she wasn’t scared shitless. 

“There’s no needle in there. Mal, you can’t do anything with that.” 

“We have to try. She has family.”

“Okay but remember our oath.” Rose puts her hand on Mal’s and it makes their eyes lock. Rose swallows thickly. “First, do no harm.”

“She’s gonna die.”

“I know but-”

The lights flicker on. The elevator jolts a little bit. Rose presses the _ door open _ button about eight times. 

They spring apart, but only the top third of the elevator is open. The rest is met with a concrete wall. Rose combs her hand through her hair. “Dammit. Maybe if you boost me I could-”

“That seems like a terrible idea, Dr. Lavelle.” 

Alex Morgan’s face appears in the space between the open elevator doors. Rose’s head hurts behind her eyes and she feels like she might start crying at any moment but this time it’s in relief. 

Alex is obviously laying flat on the ground on her stomach trying to get a look at the situation. It would be funny if the patient was stable. Right now it’s just frustrating. 

“What do we got?” 

Rose’s tongue feels like sandpaper in her mouth. She knows the answer. She does. So why can’t she talk all of a sudden?

“Cardiac tamponade,” Mal says from the other side of the elevator. “We’ll need a chest tray.”

Alex nods and looks behind her. “You heard her. Get me a chest tray, now!” 

Mal pats her hand and brings her back to the present. 

“Hey.” Their eyes meet again. “It’s gonna be okay.” 

Rose isn’t sure she believes that but she _ does _ believe Mal.

-  
“I’m just saying.” Lindsey, Russell, and Sam are in the tunnels studying, but the conversation has turned to soccer. “Messi is the greatest of all time.”

“Rinaldo, though.” By the look on Russell’s face, he’s saying it partly to get a rise out of her and it’s working. 

“He’s not the same type of player as Messi is and you know it. Come on, Russell. That’s like comparing me to you in the OR.”

“Are you saying I’m the Rinaldo of our program? I could deal with that.”

Lindsey scoffs. “No. That’s obviously Rose.”

“_ Rose _?”

“Yeah. Are you new?” 

Sam is the only one who actually has a book open and even she can’t hide a smile at that one. She doesn’t know them well, but the way people in this hospital talk, that seems like an accurate statement. 

“I’m new and I don’t see what soccer has to do with medicine.”

“It has a lot to do with medicine,” Lindsey replies, tossing her book aside. “Like sometimes you go into a game with a plan but things go badly and you have to think on your feet. Surgery goes like that all the time.”

“What’s a goal in surgery?”

“Not killing the patient.”

Sam’s about to say something but her pager goes off. 911. She looks at Lindsey and Lindsey knows.

“Shit.”

They both spring off of their gurneys and sprint towards the elevator. Lindsey hits the button several times. The light on the _ up _ button doesn’t work but as the seconds tick by, she doesn’t think it’s coming at all. 

“Fuck it,” she says and turns on her heel for the stairwell instead. 

Sam follows without question.

Michael’s room is on peds which is only three floors. Lindsey doesn’t even stop on the landing. She sprints down the hallway and into his room. There’s a crowd of people already there and respiratory already has him intubated. 

She doesn’t see Tobin.

She _ does _ see Kelley, which just makes heart rate spike a little bit. 

Lindsey ignores her reaction to Emily’s ex-wife and forces herself to the middle of the room. “What do we got?”

“V. tach. We had to shock him but we got him back. His blood pressure won’t hold now and his temperature’s 103.” 

Lindsey nods. “Okay. We’ll take him to the OR.”

“Without labs?”

Lindsey can’t tell if Kelley’s questioning her medical decisions or if she agrees with the call. It’s annoying.

“Treat the patient, not the numbers. Look at him.”

Kelley just nods. “Tobin will meet you there. Go.”

Lindsey goes.

-  
“Walk me through your approach.” 

Alex has shifted so that she’s facing them head on. Her palms are flat on the floor and she’s got her chin propped upon them. Rose doesn’t think she can actually _ see _ anything from that angle but she doesn’t say so. 

She and Rose pull on gowns, gloves, masks, and caps to try and make this procedure as normal as possible inside the elevator. It’s not a sterile procedure but it’s a clean one. 

“Clean and mark the area.”

Rose can do this part. She lowers Marie’s gown and drapes her torso, leaving just the space Mal will need to work with untouched. She pops the top off of a betadine wand and counts ribs until she finds the end of the breastbone and then goes two fingerbreadths to the left. Methodically, she cleans the area and then uses a second betadine wand for good measure. 

“Ready the needle.” Rose pulls out an eighteen gauge needle from the chest tray and attaches it to the syringe. 

Then she hands it off to Mal because her hands are still shaking.

“Keep talking while you do it. I can’t see.” 

Mal nods and pushes the plunger down to express all of the air before looking down at the surgical field. 

“I dunno if I can do this,” she whispers just loud enough for Rose to hear. 

Rose shakes her head. “You’re the only one who can.” 

Mal takes a breath, finds the edge of the breastbone, and places two fingers there. Rose marks the spot for good measure. Then it’s up to Mal. 

“I’m two fingerbreadths to the left of the xiphoid process. I’m going to insert the needle through the skin and fascia…” She does. “And keep going until I feel muscle.” Mal isn’t totally sure what she’s supposed to be feeling. She advances the needle slowly until she feels a little give. Normally they do this under ultrasound guidance and Mal’s never even done _ that _ before.

“Are you there?”

“I...I don’t know.”

“Only one way to find out,” Alex says. 

Mal looks at Rose. Rose shrugs. “Aspirate.”

Mal pulls back on the plunger and fluid fills the syringe. “Got it!” 

“Good, now you just have to- Hey! Whoa, whoa, whoa hold on here.” Alex disappears. Mal panics a little bit. Alex wasn’t really _ doing _ anything but having the cardio fellow a few feet away while she has a needle in a woman’s heart was kind of comforting. 

Rose slides her way down to the doors to listen.

“Ma’am we’re here to fix the elevator.”

“That’s Dr. Morgan to you. And that’s great but my interns have a needle in a woman’s pericardium right now.” 

Silence. 

“They’ve got a needle in her heart.”

“Right now?”

“Is that safe?”

“It’s the only way to save her. So you’re going to have to wait.”

Alex reappears at the elevator doors. “Sorry. So now you just need to hook up the tubing to the drain without killing her.”

“Alex!”

“What? Am I wrong?”

Rose grits her teeth and pulls the rest of the supplies from the kit. She hands the tubing over to Mal and they trade. Rose disposes of the needle in the sharps container. 

Yellowish liquid drains from the tube into the container at Marie’s side. 

Rose can’t stop smiling. “You just did a pericardiocentesis in an elevator.” 

“And you didn’t even kill anyone! Good job.” Alex turns back to the fire department. “Get my girls out of there.”

-  
Lindsey has to start the procedure on her own.

It’s doomed from the start. They don’t have her playlist or her preferred instrument tray in OR 3, which is the same OR where Emily coded. 

She has to make the first cut right away and as soon as she gets into the abdominal cavity, it’s clear the appendix has already ruptured. There’s pus everywhere and even though Sam is there to suction it up, Michael won’t stop bleeding when Lindsey removes the appendix.

Tobin rushes is about then. She nudges Lindsey aside and starts throwing in stitches faster than Lindsey’s hands can even move. She’s relegated to trying to clip the smaller bleeders and, for a while, it looks like they’ve got it. 

The bleeding stops. His blood pressure stabilizes. They start antibiotics. 

And then they obviously don’t have it. 

Even though his blood pressure is holding, his heart rate is too high. It starts racing into the hundreds and soon the monitor can’t even read it. The rhythm goes into a wide, oscillating pattern and Tobin calls for the paddles. 

They shock him three times. After the third defibrillation, they lose his pulse completely. 

Lindsey jumps into action immediately and starts CPR, knocking tubing and instruments to the floor in her hurry. 

“Someone push some epi,” she says after two minutes. No one else is moving. 

Lindsey knows her voice sounds a little crazy right now but the blood is rushing in her ears and she _ has _ to save this kid. 

“Don’t just stand there!” 

Tobin steps away from the table. Sam is nowhere to be found.

Then her hand is on Lindsey’s shoulder.

“He’s gone. Let’s go get cleaned up.”  
-

Lindsey hurls her scrub cap at the wall as soon as she gets to the locker room. Tobin just gives her a look as she tears off her booties. Her lucky soccer ball scrub cap stays on even as she leaves the room and gives Lindsey’s shoulder a clap as she goes. 

“He was sick before this. There was nothing you could do.”

This comes from Sam. Tobin isn’t one for pep talks, especially not when things go poorly. 

Sammy Mewis, Lindsey will learn, is great for pep talks. 

She doesn’t want to hear it, though. She’s about to snap at her, the venom’s on the tip of her tongue, but the cell phone she forgot to silence goes off in her locker and Lindsey stops to check it. 

She’s not sure what she’s expecting but it’s not a thread of messages from Emily.

_ i cant wait to get outta here _

_ mom won’t leave the room its weird _

_ neither will emma _

_ im free!!!! _

_ d’you wanna have dinner???  
  
_

There’s a lump in Lindsey’s throat. Suddenly, the anger at Sam disappears as quickly as it materialized and Lindsey finds herself smiling as she keys out _ If you don’t mind late dinner I’m in. _ _  
_-

Emily is staying at her sister’s while she recovers so this isn’t a date by any means.

Lindsey still brings a bottle of wine because it seems rude not to. She doesn’t know what they’re having so she brings one red and one white just in case. Because she knows Emily’s not a wine person even though Emma is, she’s also got a six pack of beer under one arm.

This is how she meets the twins’ mother. 

Lindsey doesn’t know why she didn’t think that Jane would be there. She flew in from Georgia and she’s obviously not going to stay in a hotel. She can feel her cheeks warming up as she tries to extend a hand to shake without dropping anything. 

“Hi, Mrs. Sonnett. I’m Lindsey. Horan. I work with Emily.” 

Something like recognition flashes across Jane’s face before she turns to look over her shoulder when Emma yells from the other room, asking who it is. 

“Lindsey Horan,” Jane tells them. There’s a shuffle of movement from deeper in the house as Jane steps aside to let Lindsey inside. Lindsey seriously considers dropping the alcohol on the front porch and bolting, but Emily’s mom is smiling almost fondly at her despite everything. 

She does her best to smile instead of grimacing and follows her inside. Lindsey does her best to let Jane lead the way like she doesn’t know that Emma’s apartment is upstairs from the veterinarian’s office on the first floor and act like she doesn’t know exactly where one of her daughter’s bedrooms is (down the hall, second door on the left).

As soon as she sets foot on the second floor, Bagel and a smaller, kind of lopsided cream dog both bombard her. 

So does Emma. 

She takes the wine from her and decides on the red before leading Lindsey down the hallway on the premise of a guided tour of an apartment she’s already seen, albeit in the dark. 

“And this is my room, but Sonny’s going to be staying here for now because the mattress in the guest bedroom sucks,” she tells Lindsey, her voice loud enough to carry. She lowers it to say “Don’t worry. Mom doesn’t know anything.” 

Lindsey blushes as they make their way to the little eat-in kitchen where Emily is sitting in a soft sweater that matches her eyes and a softer smile. Jane sits at the table, too, and Emma practically vaults over one of the empty chairs to take “her” seat. There are plates of pasta in front of each of them and Lindsey realizes she interrupted their meal. 

She pulls her sleeves over her hands as she hovers in front of an empty plate. “I didn’t realize you’d have company, Em.” 

Emma hides a cough in her wine glass. 

“Well, technically,” Emma says as she pours Lindsey a glass of wine and uses her foot to pull out the only empty chair, directly opposite her mom. Lindsey sinks into it and reaches for her glass, just for something to do with her hands instead of worrying the hem of her shirt. “_ I _ have company. It’s my place.”

“Emily didn’t tell us we were expecting company or we would have waited for you.” Jane’s gaze cuts across to Emily who just shrugs and twirls some spaghetti around her fork. 

“Lindsey works late,” she replies.

Jane gives her a stern look. “Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

“I wasn’t,” Emily says even though she was. She goes quiet as she eats and Jane starts piling food onto Lindsey’s plate. 

“Tell me when.” She does and Jane adds two more scoops to her plate for good measure. “You need to keep your strength up with such a busy job.” 

Lindsey stops halfway through adding parmesan to her pasta to look at Emily, who’s pointedly studying her food like it’s the most interesting piece of art she’s ever seen. 

“Sonny talks about you a lot,” Emma tells her with a wink. “She really-” Emma doesn’t get a chance to finish her thought because her sister stomps on her bare foot under the table. 

“Girls.” Their mom doesn’t have to say anything else. They both go back to their food and Jane goes back to studying Lindsey. 

“So, Lindsey.” Jane looks at her across the table. “Why surgery?”

Lindsey takes a sip of wine just to give herself a second to think of an answer that doesn’t come straight from her medical school and residency interview trail. 

While she does, Emily says “This isn’t a job interview, Ma.”

“I’m just trying to get to know your friend.” There’s an emphasis on the way she says _ friend _ that makes Lindsey think Jane knows more than she’s admitting. 

Lindsey shrugs as she tears her roll into halves and then into thirds. “My mom is a pretty famous oncologist and my dad is in pathology. I always knew I wanted to do medicine but I kind of...wanted to do my own thing? Surgery seemed like the farthest thing from that.”

Jane seems satisfied with the answer. They all go back to eating. Bagel comes to sit at Lindsey’s side and rests her head in her lap. Lindsey strokes her ear with her free hand. The little cream-colored puppy keeps barking from her other side. 

“What’s with the dog?” She asks them all, just for something to fill the sound of cutlery. 

Emma rolls her eyes. “Emily’s good at bringing home strays.” She looks right at Lindsey when she says it. Emily steps on her foot again. 

“This guy just left him here when I stopped by that day I took off work.” 

The day of the accident. Lindsey remembers it perfectly but doesn’t mention it. Neither does Emma. “I had to perform surgery because Rocky Mountain Vet took a long lunch. He’s my project because he kind of hates people.” 

“Really?” Lindsey quirks a brow. “He’s sleeping on my foot.” 

Emily tips sideways to look and there he is, dozing and using Lindsey’s shoe as a pillow. She straightens back up and plays with the pull-tab on her beer. “Maybe he’s just picky with his people.”

“Dogs are good judges of character,” Jane says. 

“Bagel _ hates _ Kelley,” Emma says. 

“She doesn’t _ hate _ her,” Emily argues. Bagel barks as if to say she disagrees.

Lindsey doesn’t say anything.

-  
“It’s your turn for dishes,” Emma says as she shuffles towards the couch. Jane stares at her. 

Emma holds up her hands as she turns on the TV. “I did them last time Emily was here for dinner. Ask her!”

Emily grumbles a confirmation and starts towards the sink. She’s moving slowly and looks exhausted. Lindsey leaps to her feet immediately. 

“I can do it.” 

Jane beams at her from across the kitchen where she’s packing away enough leftovers to feed an army. 

“I just mean, you should rest. I’m a doctor. Trust me.”

Emily laughs and bumps her hip as she passes her to the sink. “I’m a doctor, too, and I think I’m capable of doing dishes.” 

“Why don’t you let people help you?” Jane wants to know. 

Emily shrugs. “It’s the masochism.” She turns on the water and starts scrubbing. 

Lindsey goes to stand beside her and holds her hand out for the pot. Emily arches a brow. 

“You wash, I dry.” 

“I like her,” Jane says loudly as she passes. 

“I like her too,” Emma says. Lindsey bets she’s waggling her eyebrows in that Sonnett way but she doesn’t turn around to look. 

Emily doesn’t say anything.

-

They’re standing outside the hospital. Mal is looking at the stars. Rose is looking at Mal. 

“Mal.” The way Rose says her name makes Mal look at her. Rose loses her nerve and is thankful for her untied shoelace. She drops to a knee to redo it. It’s easier to talk from down here. “You were a fucking rockstar today. It was _ awesome _.”

Mal laughs. It’s one of Rose’s favorite sounds. 

“I was just doing my job.” She shrugs. 

Rose pops to her feet and puts her hands on Mal’s shoulders. They’re in each other’s space. Their faces are only inches apart as Rose ducks her head to catch Mal’s eye and gives her shoulders a firm squeeze. 

“You saved a woman’s life today. That’s badass.”

Mal shrugs again and it knocks Rose’s hands off of her. Rose puts them in her pockets to keep from reaching out again. “We’re doctors. We’re _ supposed _ to do that.”

“Yeah, in an OR with the right tools and support staff.” Rose looks at her shoes again. Her shoelace is undone again. She leaves it. “I couldn’t do it today.”

It’s Mal’s turn to catch Rose’s eye. “Hey,” she says and her voice is so gentle that it makes Rose look up from her sneakers. “That was the scariest thing I’ve ever done. I couldn’t have done it by myself. I’m glad you were there today.”

Rose smiles. “I didn’t do anything, though.” 

Mal shakes her head. “You held my needle. You’re a good needle holder.” 

Rose starts laughing and then Mal starts laughing and Rose’s stomach does that flippy thing again. 

“Hey, do you want to-”

“Mal!” They both look across the street where Dansby is crossing it. “Dr. Mallory Pugh,” he says as he reaches them. Rose rolls her eyes even as he greets her with “Dr. Lavelle.”

“Heart guy,” Rose says as she wipes her nose. 

He waves goodnaturedly. Rose rolls her eyes one more time for good measure. “I was wondering if you had dinner plans?” 

Mal looks at Rose. “We were going to go out, I think. We just drained a woman’s heart in the elevator today.” 

“Whoa!” Dansby sounds just the right amount of surprised and impressed. Rose hates it. 

“_ We _didn’t really do anything. Mal did.” Dansby beams at her. Rose hates herself more than Dansby’s charm. 

“You _ have _ to tell me all about that.” He manages to tear his eyes away from Mal long enough to ask Rose if she wants to join them. He’s just being polite and it annoys Rose when Mal tries to convince her to third-wheel them.

“No it’s cool,” she says with a shrug. “I’ll just get takeout.”

“Are you sure? We could all go.” Mal even sounds a little sad. 

“I’m sure. I’m going to go read about pericardiocentesis. So I’m ready for next time.” 

Mal gives her a hug and Rose tries and fails not to melt into it. “You’re such a weirdo. I love you.” 

“Love you too,” Rose whispers as she draws back from the hug. She gives Dansby a courtesy wave as he takes Mal’s hand and leads her away. Mal doesn’t look back.

“Hey, Rose.” 

Sam Mewis is just leaving the hospital. She’s still wearing a scrub cap and Rose points it out. Sheepishly she takes it off and smoothes down some blonde flyaways. 

“Hey. You look like shit. Good first day?”

Sam winces. “We lost our patient. Have you seen Lindsey?”

Rose shakes her head. “Nah. Probably with Sonnett.” 

“Oh, yeah, I think she said something about dinner.” 

Rose scoffs. “Typical.” Rose has the thought that she’s itching for a cigarette even though she’s never smoked in her life. She knows the facts. Smoking increases your risk for like 90% of cancers. But she’s itching for _ something _, something that surgery usually gives her but that she failed at today. 

She’s thinking about going back inside and picking up an ER shift, even though she hates the ER, and praying for a trauma when Sam starts talking again. 

“Is there anywhere around here to eat? I’m starving.”

“Joe’s is across the street,” Rose answers, looping her arm through Sam’s and leading her towards the bar. “Good food. Better drinks.” 

“I don’t drink on work nights.”

“Neither did I. Then I started working here.”

-  
“How long do you think I’ll last sharing a house with my mom and twin sister?” Emily asks her from the front porch. She’s got a blanket draped over her shoulders like a cape and she’s sipping the same beer from dinner. 

Lindsey holds the end of a long lead while Bagel romps in the front yard. She’s got the puppy’s leash, too, but he’s decided that all he wants to do is flop on the grass at her feet. Lindsey’s kind of in love with him. 

“The offer still stands. My house is always open to you.”

“Why?”

Lindsey picks the puppy up and retreats back to the porch. She sits on the step below Emily’s, which makes them almost the same height. 

“Why what?” 

“Why are you so good to me? I broke up with you and you’re still...here.” 

Emily’s eyebrows are knitted together and there’s a crease in her forehead that Lindsey really wants to smooth away with her fingers. She settles for petting the dog in her lap instead. 

“Did you hear anything? Back when you were still coming out of it?” 

Emily shrugs. “I remember pieces. Like, I know Kelley was there. I remember her talking but not what she said.” She swallows. “I remember hearing you.” 

Lindsey nods. “Well after you got hurt, I decided I was gonna stop messing around. I slept with half the hospital. The peds nurses still won’t look at me.” Emily snorts. “But I wanna be with you, so if there’s still a chance for that, it’s pointless to keep doing that.” 

Emily looks across the yard at Bagel, who’s snapping at fireflies she’ll never catch. She calls the dog to her and she stops what she’s doing to trot over. 

“You shouldn’t have to wait for a maybe.”

“Well if you tell me to stop waiting, I will. Your sister’s kinda cute.”

Emily groans. “Don’t remind me.” She takes a sip from her beer and talks into Bagel’s face as she props her paws on Emily’s knees. “I don’t want you to stop.”

Lindsey’s heart skips a beat. It maybe stops entirely. 

“But I’m not sure if I’ll ever be, you know, ready.”

“Well,” Lindsey stands up and passes the puppy off to her. “Let me know when you figure it out.”

“Trust me, you’ll be the first to know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> how do we feel? 
> 
> find me @cornerkix_ on twitter if ya want


	13. thanks for the memories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mal turns the burner off and distributes the last of the pancakes directly onto Dansby’s plate. Then she goes to the sink and starts doing the dishes. “I just thought since we don’t get a ton of time off, we’d have Thanksgiving dinner together.”
> 
> “We can still do that,” Rose says before Lindsey has a chance to process.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a thanksgiving chapter! yes i know i'm late. leave me alone. 
> 
> there's some hunting in this chapter if that weirds you out but there's nothing graphic in here? please note i don't hunt OR really know anything about turkey hunting so if that is inaccurate just use your imagination lol
> 
> i'll probably do a christmas chapter too but idk if it will be done before the holiday itself.
> 
> there are a couple small cameos in here. one of those characters will be more prominent than the other...at least to start. 
> 
> also, as usual, just a quick parse through plus a spellcheck so all typos are mine. enjoy the ride!

When Lindsey stumbles into the kitchen at 4:30, Mal is already there. 

So is Dansby Swanson. 

Lindsey freezes in the threshold as she takes in the scene. Dansby sits on a stool at the counter shoveling pancakes into his mouth. His hair is mussed and there’s a wide set grin parting his lips. 

Mal is wearing only a well-worn gray t-shirt that looks incredibly soft and dwarfs her. She’s humming softly at the sink and does a little shimmy with her hips as she sings into the spatula she’s holding.

Lindsey kind of feels like she’s interrupted something in her own home. As quietly as she can, she tries to shuffle back into the hallway, intent on taking her shower and letting the happy couple enjoy their morning 

Of course nothing ever goes as planned. As soon as she turns around, she rams right into Rose, who looks like she hadn’t slept at all the night before. 

“Watch where you’re going, Horan,” Rose hisses, hopping on one foot to nurse the one Lindsey has just stepped on. 

Lindsey rolls her eyes. “Okay, drama queen. Who pissed in your cheerios?” 

She doesn’t miss the way Rose’s eyes flick over her shoulder before settling back on Lindsey. Rose just shrugs. “You, evidently. Move. I need caffeine.”

Mal hands Rose a cup of freshly poured black coffee and manages to pull a smile out of Rose without even trying. Rose takes a giant gulp of coffee before thanking Mal over the edge of her mug. 

“No problem. Linds, sit down and eat. There’s pancakes, bacon, and I’m working on the eggs.” 

“They’re really good,” Dansby offers helpfully. 

Lindsey isn’t sure about it. She hovers uncertainly in the doorway of her own kitchen and thinks about going to shower now before Mal uses up all the hot water. She’s just about made up her mind when Rose looks up at her like a deer caught in the headlights. It’s enough to make Lindsey’s feet start moving until she drops into the stool next to her and steals a piece of bacon off of her plate. She gets a slap on the wrist for her troubles.

“There’s plenty to go around,” Mal chides them from the stove. She slides a fresh stack of pancakes onto a plate and Dansby lets them have the first go. 

Lindsey takes two.

Rose takes the last four right out from under Dansby’s nose. He doesn’t even blink. He just doles some scrambled eggs onto his plate instead.

“So guys,” Mal says in a way that makes Lindsey’s shoulders square. “What are we doing for Thanksgiving?” 

Lindsey and Rose exchange a glance. “Do you wanna tell her or should I?” Rose says. 

“Tell me what?”

Lindsey just shakes her head, so Rose answers for them both. “We’re working.”

Mal isn’t facing them but by the way her shoulders fall, her face probably does, too. Lindsey watches Rose sit on her hands to keep from going to her. 

“Oh,” is all Mal says. Lindsey doesn’t know what that means. 

“Oh?” Rose prods. 

Mal turns the burner off and distributes the last of the pancakes directly onto Dansby’s plate. Then she goes to the sink and starts doing the dishes. “I just thought since we don’t get a ton of time off, we’d have Thanksgiving dinner together.”

“We can still do that,” Rose says before Lindsey has a chance to process. Normally, Thanksgiving is spent at her parents with her brother, his wife, and their kids with tons of extended family members that Lindsey barely knows. There won’t be time for that this year and Lindsey’s almost glad. At least no one will ask her why she’s still single. The med school excuse worked for a while and maybe the residency one would for another year or so, but her Nan always warned her that _ she wasn’t getting any younger! _

(Lindsey was never quite sure if she meant herself or Lindsey when she said that.)

Mal turns around to look at them. “Really?”

“I mean, Lindsey gets off at noon and I get off at six. It might be nice to have a home-cooked meal for once. Right, Linds?”

Lindsey thinks of the pile of mismatched takeout containers in their fridge. She nods. “Yeah, that sounds fun.” 

“Cool, I’ll bring dessert!” 

Rose must have forgotten Dansby was there. She frowns at him. “You bake?”

“I buy.”

Rose wrinkles her nose. Mal waves him off. “We’ll watch a YouTube tutorial on it. Pumpkin pie can’t be _ that _ hard, right?” 

Dansby winks at her. “Right.”

Rose gags on her coffee. Lindsey pounds her palm between her shoulder blades and she starts coughing harder. Lindsey gives her a look like _ serves you right. _

“Will Sonny come, do you think?”

It’s Lindsey’s turn to choke on her food. Rose punches her in the back. “Wh- why would she?” 

Mal bites her bottom lip. “I don’t know. She used to live here. I just thought it’d be like our makeshift family holiday.” When Lindsey doesn’t say anything, Mal keeps talking. “We can invite Sam and Pat, too. It’ll be great!” 

Lindsey rubs her forehead. She can think of a few things it’ll be, but _ great _ isn’t one of them. 

**-** **  
**Emily looks down at her watch like the battery might be dead. It’s not like she’s wearing a watch that needs winding. Her mom had gifted her an Apple Watch when she’d graduated medical school. It switches time zones automatically and knows when they’re entering Daylight Savings. 

The watch isn’t wrong. Maybe she’d gotten the wrong day?

She swipes through her apps to find her calendar only to find that _ therapy, 8 am _ is indeed scheduled for this date but she’s still standing outside of the counselor’s seventh-floor office with a closed door in her face. 

Her watch ticks to 8:06. She considers blowing it off. While the program has mandated that she attend thirty-six hours of therapy and a mental health evaluation before being approved to return to work, Emily feels like if the therapist _ they assigned to her _ is late for their first session it’s kind of like breaking the contract from their end.

Emily stares at the frosted glass door in front of her for a second. She counts to ten. She counts to twenty. Then, she lifts her hand to knock. 

There’s no sign of movement from inside the office and Emily’s pretty sure whoever this person is, they’re not in there. 

She turns to go and almost runs right into a blonde woman balancing a lidless cup of coffee on her laptop computer. The coffee sloshes dangerously and Emily reaches out to snatch it without really thinking about it. 

“Thanks,” the blonde stranger says with a smile. “I’m late.” 

“Hi, late. I’m Emily.” 

Recognition flashes through the woman’s eyes. She shuffles a stack of paperwork and the laptop under one arm so she can hold out her left hand to shake. 

“Emily. It’s great to finally meet you. How are you feeling?”

Emily gives her hand a shake and hands the coffee back to her with a guarded grin. “Are you the therapist?”

The therapist wrinkles her nose. “Well technically I’m a psychiatrist who specializes in cognitive behavioral therapy but, yeah, you could say that.”

Emily sizes up her new therapist. She looks really put together in a dark suit and glasses even if she’s not the most organized when it comes to her morning coffee. She’s not sure what to make of her yet.

“Dr. Sauerbrunn.”

“Please. You can call me Becky.” 

This already feels weird.

-  
After her first surgery of the day, Lindsey ducks into the lobby to grab coffee from the “good” coffee cart only to find the line winding almost back to the elevators. She checks her watch as she gets in line. She knows she’s going to have to leave before she gets to the front of the line but on the off chance the superstar barista is working, she stays put. 

Five minutes into her wait, she’s missed four pages and a text from Tobin telling her to get her ass back to the wards in the next five minutes or face spending the rest of her shift dictating Alex Morgan’s post-op notes. 

With a sigh and a last longing look at the coffee counter, Lindsey steps out of line. She almost steps right into Emily Sonnett, too. 

“Hey!” Emily smiles and Lindsey smiles back without realizing it. They haven’t really talked since that night on Emma’s porch. She’s not sure what there is to say that she hasn’t already. The ball’s in Emily’s court. 

Emily holds an iced coffee out to her and Lindsey almost melts into a puddle. “What’s this?”

“I saw you back there five minutes ago. I know how you get when you don’t get your coffee. I figured I’d do Tobin a favor.” When Lindsey doesn’t take a sip, Emily rubs the back of her neck and chews her lower lip. Lindsey tries not to think about the tattoo just beneath Emily’s fingertips _ or _ her lips. 

(She fails.)

“Did you change your order?” Emily sounds disappointed. “You can have mine, but I don’t know if you’re a fan of oat milk cortados.” 

Lindsey shakes her head and takes too big a drink. It makes her head hurt but she powers through it. “I didn’t think you’d remember my coffee order.”

Color fills Emily’s cheeks. She rubs her neck again. “I remember lots of stuff.” That sentence hangs between them for a moment. Lindsey’s watch ticks another minute forward. She doesn’t have a lot of time but she doesn’t want to go just yet. 

“I didn’t know you were back.” Mercifully, Emily is heading towards the elevators, too. At least she’s moving towards her destination instead of standing still. 

“I’m not.” When Lindsey doesn’t respond, Emily continues. “I have therapy upstairs.” Her grin is more of a grimace.

“How’s _ that _ going?”

“About as well as you can expect. Becky’s cool, though, so at least it’s not totally awful.”

“And then you get to come back?”

Emily shakes her head. Then she nods. “I have to get an evaluation and clearance from her first, but I don’t think it’ll be a problem. Hopefully next week.”

Lindsey exhales. “I hope so. I- _ we’ve _ missed you around here.” 

Emily’s blush spreads down her neck. Lindsey looks away from the smattering of freckles disappearing beneath her sweater as they step into the elevator. 

They lapse into silence. Lindsey drinks more coffee even though she already feels like her body is vibrating a little bit. The doors spring open and Emily smiles back at her and waves as she leaves. 

Lindsey steps forward to stick her foot between the doors. They spring apart again. “Wait, Em, hang on a sec.”

Emily does. She looks a little surprised. Lindsey clears her throat. “What are you doing for Thanksgiving?” 

“My mom’s still here.” Lindsey doesn’t miss the eyeroll. “And my dad and uncle are coming in. We always...we have this thing we always do. My dad, my uncle, Emma and I usually...we have to go hunt a turkey for dinner.” 

Lindsey raises her eyebrows. Emily talks faster. “I know it’s kind of weird and brutal but it’s tradition. Why?”

Lindsey shakes her head. “Mal’s gonna cook. I just figured I’d ask in case you didn’t have plans.”

Emily looks up from her sneakers. “Are you inviting me to your house for Thanksgiving dinner?” 

Lindsey feels a blush creeping up _ her _ neck now. “I mean it doesn’t matter now. You have plans.” She takes her foot back. The elevator doors slide towards each other.

Emily flings her arm in between them.

“I’d love to.”

“What?”

“I’d love to come to dinner with you guys. It sounds way more fun than watching football with my dad and listening to Emma and my mom fight about the best way to braise a turkey.”

Lindsey blinks. “Oh. Okay. Dinner is at six-thirty.”

“I’ll see you there.” After Emily pulls her arm back, the elevator doors click shut again. Lindsey leans back against the wall. 

“You two are ridiculous.”

Lindsey’s eyes snap open. She’d thought they were alone in the elevator, but Alex Morgan is lounging in the corner, arms crossed over her chest. She looks amused as she waves her fingers in Lindsey’s direction. 

When the doors open on her floor, Lindsey can’t get out fast enough.

-  
Lindsey runs into Emily again at the end of her shift. 

Actually, if they’re being technical, _ Emily _ runs into _ her _. Literally. 

Lindsey reaches out to steady her automatically and Emily starts apologizing before she looks up from her phone long enough to realize who’s caught her. When she does, she offers her a soft smile.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

Emily takes a step backwards and slips her phone into her pocket. “You heading out?” She tosses her thumb over her shoulder and Lindsey is suddenly struck by how cute she thinks Emily Sonnett is for the millionth time. 

She nods. They fall into step together, Lindsey slowing her stride to match Emily’s and Emily speeding hers up just a hair so it’s not uncomfortable for either of them. When they get outside, it’s raining because of course it is. Lindsey doesn’t have an umbrella, so she’s trying to guess how drenched she’ll get if she makes a run for her car when Emily’s umbrella pops open. 

Emily takes a side step closer and offers a shrug. “It’s big enough for two.” It is. Barely. As they walk, Lindsey has to slip an arm around Emily’s shoulders to keep herself fully dry. Emily doesn’t seem to mind. 

They reach Lindsey’s car and Lindsey looks around. “Where’s the bike?”

Emily snorts. “Ma made me sell it after...y’know. I drive a civic now.” She presses the button on her remote and the headlights of a nearby car flash. Lindsey presses her lips together to keep from cracking up. One of her dimples pokes out anyway. 

“Linds-”

“Hey I-”

They both stop talking at the same time. Emily glances down at her perpetually untied sneakers. Lindsey looks at Emily. She studies the way her hair is piled up on her head, a few flyaways escaping the elastic. She looks at the way her mouth is upturned just on one side. 

“You first,” Lindsey says. 

Emily’s eyes drift up to meet hers. It’s like she can’t look away. “I know this is a weird question but d’you wanna come with me and my family on Thanksgiving?” 

Lindsey tilts her head like Bagel always does when she doesn’t understand something. “You want me to come with you when you guys go chase, hunt, and kill a slow turkey for dinner?”

The color drains from Emily’s face. “Forget it. It was a stupid idea. I’ll just see you at dinner.”

Emily turns to leave before Lindsey opens her car door so she gets soaked for the few seconds she’s not under Emily’s umbrella, but she lurches forward to duck back underneath it and reaches for Emily’s sleeve. 

“Hey.” Emily shuffles around to look at her. She’s worrying her bottom lip again. Lindsey presses her thumb to it and she stops. “I’d love to.”

Emily’s eyes light up. “Awesome. We usually head out around noon because Emma likes to sleep in.”

“Perfect. I get off at noon.”

-  
The doorbell rings. The stuffing is starting to burn, so Mal asks Dansby to grab it. He does. 

“Hey, Mal’s in the kitchen but- Oh. Hi.” He raises his eyebrows as Alex Morgan pushes past him into the house. Dansby follows her gaze into the kitchen.

“Where’s Horan? Isn’t this her house?”

Dansby rolls with it. He slides his hands into his pockets and looks at the bottle of wine in Alex’s left hand. “Lindsey’s working. So is Rose.” 

Alex looks crestfallen. Dansby is pretty sure she’s already a little drunk by the way her words slur when she says “Oh. I was hoping to crash their party.” 

“I’m sure we could handle one more. Right, Mal?” 

Mal glances over her shoulder. She’s wearing oven mitts, an apron with a turkey on it, and a smile even as her eyebrows knit together in confusion. “Yeah, of course. Come on in. The more the merrier.”

Alex lingers in the entryway for a second. She’s thinking about just going to Joe’s instead. The bartender always holds a small potluck dinner for patrons without family members nearby. Lots of hospital staff, particularly the residents, go. Alex figures she counts. 

Mal comes into the foyer and holds her oven-mitt covered hands out. Alex hands her the wine and Mal laughs. “No, dummy.” She looks briefly worried about calling her boss dumb but shakes it off. “Gimme your coat. You’re staying and helping me prep the turkey for its procedure.”

Alex thinks about it for a moment. Then she gives Mal her jacket. Even spending time outside of work with her residents is better than spending Thanksgiving alone, she thinks. 

“So,” Alex says as she follows Mal and Dansby into the kitchen. “How long has _ this _ been going on?” She points between the pair as she starts rummaging through the cabinets for wine glasses. Eventually, Dansby hands her a coffee mug with an anatomical diagram of a heart on it with a winning smile and she just pours herself a glass of wine directly into it. 

“A couple of weeks but I’ve been trying to get her to go out with me since we met.” 

Alex purses her lips. Mal points the carving knife she’s holding at Dansby. “And what did I tell you?”

Dansby sighs and rattles off his answer in a practiced way. “That you couldn’t date a patient because it’s a conflict of interest. But don’t worry, Dr. Morgan. Mal waited until I was discharged to say yes.” 

Alex takes another drink. “This is going to be a disaster.”

“The dinner?” Mal asks.

“No.” She doesn’t elaborate. Mal doesn’t press it. Dansby meets Alex’s gaze over the counter and slides her a cutting board and a selection of vegetables.

“Let’s see if you’re as good with a chopping knife, Doc.”

-  
Lindsey’s entire body aches when she plops down onto a bench in the locker room. She’s halfway through changing into jeans and a freshly purchased camouflage jacket that she’ll probably never wear again when Rose shows up. 

“Are you trying to blend in so no one stops you in the hall and asks you to stick around?” Rose says from under the t-shirt she’s shrugging out of. Once it’s off, she flings it in the general direction of her locker. Her scrub top catches on her earrings as she tugs it over her head. 

“No. I’m meeting Sonny.”

“And you’re trying to impress her by looking like you just walked out of a Field & Stream photoshoot?” 

Lindsey kind of doesn’t want to tell her. She already thinks _ Rose _ thinks she’s whipped and she isn’t even dating Emily. But Rose is just as whipped for Mal and at least Emily isn’t married anymore. 

The bar is very low. 

Lindsey doesn’t have to answer herself because Emily appears in the doorway. She’s dressed head-to-toe in camouflage except for a bright orange winter cap plopped on her head. 

“You look ridiculous,” Rose tells her, hunched over and wheezing. Lindsey doesn’t think so. She thinks Emily looks kind of cute, actually, but she doesn’t say so. She hopes her smile conveys that without her having to. 

Emily just rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I know. Tradition, right?” Her attention drifts to Lindsey, who’s pulling her new jacket over her shoulders. Her smirk softens a little as she crosses the room to help her pull it closed, which is good because Lindsey’s hands are kind of shaking. 

Emily buttons Lindsey’s jacket and leans in to tuck some hair behind Lindsey’s ear. She holds eye contact a second too long and Lindsey panics for a second. She’s ready. She’s told Emily as much. But she didn’t expect them to do this at work (again) or in front of co-workers. 

Rose will never let her live this down. 

But Emily doesn’t kiss her. In fact, she isn’t even reaching for Lindsey’s mussed hair. She snaps a price tag off of the front of Lindsey’s coat and twirls it between her fingers. “Did you get all dressed up for me?” Emily jokes, eyes bright despite the fluorescent hospital lighting.

“I don’t hunt.”

“You do now.”

Rose finally emerges from her scrub top and practically howls “You’re going _ hunting _ with _ Emily Sonnett _ for Thanksgiving?” And then, half a beat later, she adds “What about Mal?”

“We’re going to dinner after. This is just a formality because my family’s weird.”

“I like your family,” Lindsey says. 

“You haven’t spent that much time with them yet,” Emily responds. 

“You guys sound like a married couple. I’m going to work. Don’t die.” Rose makes the sign of the cross as she leaves as if she’s giving them her blessing. 

Emily holds her left hand out to Lindsey. Lindsey notices that she’s not wearing and rings on it anymore.

“You ready for this?”

“Nope.” Lindsey takes her hand. “Let’s go.”

-  
“That doesn’t seem anatomically possible.” 

Alex, Dansby, and Mal are huddled around the kitchen island with Mal’s laptop open to a Martha Stewart video about stuffing the turkey. Alex rolls up her sleeves. 

“Well, you don’t get anything done if you don’t try. Right, Dr. Pugh?”

“Right.” They manage to get the turkey stuffed and braised with a running sports commentary by Dansby, who is videotaping the entire thing. The oven dings and Mal carefully carries the pan with their dinner towards it. 

“Don’t forget we want the internal temperature to get to-”

“-at least 165 degrees,” Mal finishes. She sets the pan in the oven and holds a hand out. “Thermometer.” 

“Thermometer,” Alex echoes, handing it over. “Now you really have to dig in. Remember, a turkey has a tough skin just like a person, so don’t be afraid to push it.” Mal digs in. There’s a small _ pop _. “There you go. Make sure it’s secure but don’t-”

There’s another pop, this one louder, and the pan starts filling with turkey juice. “You hit the bone,” Alex shakes her head. “The patient’s bleeding out, Pugh. What are you going to do? Think.”

Dansby’s stopped taping them. He takes a drink straight from the wine bottle. Thankfully, the doorbell rings to save him from witnessing Alex and Mal trying to perform basic life support on their dinner. 

“Lindsey Horan’s house. What can I do for...you?”

Kelley O’Hara is standing on the front porch holding a pumpkin pie. 

“Is Emily here?”

-  
“Take a look at this,” are the first words out of Tobin’s mouth when Rose arrives in the ED. She’s not late for her shift. In fact, she’s about fifteen minutes early. She agreed to relieve Lindsey early because she didn’t want to hang around the house with Dansby and Mal and Lindsey wanted to meet up with Emily early. 

Rose is still catching her breath from running down from the surgical floor, but she ducks down to peer at the chest X-ray computer in front of them. “Foreign body in the esophagus,” she says, squinting at the screen. “What _ is _ that?”

Tobin stands up. She stretches. “You have to guess before I tell you. That’s the rule.” 

Rose looks at the image again. “Do you have a lateral?” Tobin clicks a button and the angle changes. Rose still has no idea what it is. 

Tobin looks expectant. “Some kind of toy. I don’t know. How old is this person?”

“Thirty-eight,” Tobin says as she leads Rose to their patient’s bed. “Hey, Billy. This is Dr. Lavelle. She’s gonna help me with your surgery, but can you tell her what you did first?” 

“My brothers and I always fight over who gets to do the wishbone thing, so I swallowed it before they could.” 

Rose looks at this burly, linebacker looking guy and points at him. “You swallowed a wishbone whole?”

“Yep.”

“What’s your plan here?” Tobin asks her. Billy looks curious, too. 

“Since it’s got the potential for puncture we should go in surgically. Has it moved since you got those films?”

Billy looks sheepish. “I swallowed it.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“No, when Dr. Heath went to look with the camera I...swallowed it again.” 

Rose looks at Tobin. Tobin sighs. “It’s in his stomach now.”

Rose grins. “Happy Thanksgiving to me. We’ve got to go in from the stomach.”

Tobin nods. “Get him prepped and I’ll see you down there. I have to call Christen.” Rose gives her a look. “I’m covering a surgical patient of hers today.”

“Okay.”

-  
Lindsey sits between Emily and her sister in the backseat of the car. Emily’s dad and uncle are twins, too, so Lindsey is kind of the odd person out. 

“We should have brought Bagel,” Emma is saying from Lindsey’s left. Emily says something but Lindsey has no idea what. She hopes it wasn’t a question or directed at her. Emily keeps pressing her thigh into Lindsey’s and Lindsey has to focus really hard on not bursting into flames on the spot. 

“Here we are!” Bill says as he puts the car into park. They all pile out and Lindsey feels really out of place in her bright camo. The Sonnetts are all dressed in camouflage, too, but it’s well worn because they’ve done this before. Emily’s uncle hands her a hunting rifle and she almost drops it. 

“Safety’s on,” he tells her with a nod and then turns away. Emma follows after the men and Lindsey leans over to Emily. 

“I think I’m going to be more of a distraction than a help here.”

Emily doesn’t even bother whispering. “Do you think I brought you out here because I want you to kill me dinner to prove yourself?” The way she says it makes Lindsey feel a little stupid. She didn’t think that, not _ exactly _ but-

“Why _ did _ you ask me out here?”

“Because I hate doing this but Emma and my dad love it. I like spending time with you so this will make it a little more bearable.” 

Lindsey blinks. “Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh.”

Emma’s voice carries to them from over the ridge. “Stop flirting and come on!”

Emily sighs and hitches her rifle over her shoulder. "The sooner we bag a bird the sooner we can go, so let me know if you see anything.” 

Then she winks. It’s below forty but Lindsey feels hot all over. She unzips her jacket a little bit. 

“Are you good at it?” Lindsey asks as they start walking towards the others. 

“At what?”

Lindsey flicks her wrist out to indicate the field and the hunters. “All this.”

“Oh,” Emily says with a shrug. “I’m okay. Emma’s better at it than me, but don’t tell her I said that. She’ll never shut up about it.” 

Lindsey grins. “Deal.”

-  
“Um,” Dansby glances towards the kitchen. “No she’s not home. She doesn’t live here. You know that, right?” Dansby isn’t really clear on all of the relationship dynamics between Mal’s friends but he _ does _ know enough to know that Emily and Kelley were married. He’s not really clear about much else. 

“No I know.” Kelley shifts the pie to the opposite hand. Dansby wonders if she bought it for a second before noticing the barcode on the bottom of the tin. “I actually wanted to talk to Lindsey if she’s home but I wasn’t sure if…”

“She’s working.” 

Kelley frowns. She hands him the pumpkin pie. “Oh. Okay. Thanks.” She turns to go and Dansby is left holding the pie when Alex appears at this elbow. He almost drops the pie. 

“Jesus.”

“Nah, just Alex.” She nudges his side playfully but with enough force that Dansby gets the hint and retreats back to the kitchen. 

“Kel?”

Kelley spins around so fast she almost trips over her untied shoelaces. “Al?” 

They stare at each other for a second. “What are you doing here?” Alex asks. 

“I wanted to talk with Lindsey about...something but she’s not here.”

“Yeah she’s hunting.”

Kelley’s lips turn down. “I thought she was working?” 

Alex shrugs. “She was. Then she was going turkey hunting.” 

Alex doesn’t have to say it. Kelley already knows. “With the Sonnetts.”

“You always hated that tradition.”

“Well, yeah. I don’t even eat meat but it’s not like the Sonnetts ate _ that _ turkey for Thanksgiving. It was just such a waste of-”

Alex is smiling at her. Kelley hates it. She also kind of loves it. 

“Anyway, I’m just gonna-” She gestures over her shoulder. 

“Stay,” Alex says, like she has any say in who stays or goes at this Thanksgiving dinner at someone else’s house. Kelley digs the toe of her boot into the floor and tucks her hands into her pockets. She’s thinking about it. Alex can tell. 

“I don’t think that’s such a-”

“Hi!” Says a voice over Kelley’s shoulder. Sam Mewis and her husband are there. Sammy’s carrying a giant bowl of mashed potatoes. Pat’s holding a can of cranberry sauce. “We’re not late are we?”

Kelley steps aside but Alex tugs her inside by the sleeve. “No, you’re just in time.”

-  
“How long does this usually take?” Lindsey whispers. She and Emily are sitting in those folding chairs soccer moms use. Emily has her rifle over her knee. Lindsey is holding hers because she’s paranoid about it accidentally going off even though she hasn’t taken the safety off.

“Hours because someone can’t shut up,” Emily hisses in her sister’s general direction. Emma is standing between her dad and her uncle, mid-conversation about the car their uncle is thinking about buying. She pauses mid-sentence to flip her twin off and Emily blows her a kiss. 

“If you see one, let me know. I can get us home in twenty minutes.”

They’ve seen a few other groups since they settled in their spot, but no turkeys. Emily takes a sip of beer from the cooler Bill had dragged with them. Lindsey bites her tongue to keep from pointing out that drinking while handling a firearm might not be the best idea. 

Emily looks so comfortable, legs kicked out in front of her and camouflage ball cap pulled down over her eyes. She’s definitely asleep. Lindsey can tell by the way the worry lines in her face disappear. There’s a half smile on her mouth and her arms loosen just a little bit. Her gun falls to the ground and Lindsey flinches, but it doesn’t go off.

Emma has a turkey call, so the noise doesn’t freak Lindsey out like it had the first time. But when she glances to her left, Lindsey sees that Emma’s on the phone. Bill and her brother are nowhere to be found. 

Lindsey looks up. About a hundred yards away, a turkey is standing very still and staring right at her. Lindsey stands up. She doesn’t even think about waking Emily. She just scrambles for her rifle, removes the safety, and takes three shots in quick succession. The first two miss terribly, scaring the bird. It starts trotting away and that’s when the third, still-wide shot hits. 

The turkey drops and Lindsey screams, waking Emily up. She jolts to her feet and looks around like _ she’s _ the one who got shot. “What? What’s up?”

“I got it?” Lindsey says, upturned at the end like a question.

Emma jogs over. She bends over to check and laughs loud enough that the men come back from the treeline. “Lindsey got one!”

Bill doesn’t look particularly impressed but he does nod. “Let’s go home.”

Emma bags the bird and holds it out to Lindsey when she reaches her. Lindsey just holds her palms up and Emma chuckles again, nudging Lindsey in the shoulder as the three of them walk together back to the car. “Hey, Lindsey, you’re part of the family now! Emily’s never even bagged one and we’ve been doing this since we were six.”

Lindsey looks at Emily. “You said you were good at this.”

Emily shrugs. “Just because I’m good at it doesn’t mean I bagged one. Emma usually steals my birds.”

“And now Lindsey has.” She loads the gear and the haul into the car but hesitates with the rifles. “Hey, wait, we need to do a salute to Lindsey for getting one!” She loads up her gun, planning on taking a few shots into the open air to celebrate. 

Except the gun slips out of her hands and lands on the trigger and fires. “Fuck!” Emma’s voice is shrill as she drops to the ground. Emily rushes to her and drops to her knees, hands fluttering over her sister’s body looking for blood or signs of injury.

“Where’d it go?” Emily says when she doesn’t see anything. Lindsey is right beside her. 

Emma rolls onto her side, clutching behind her. “It’s in my ass,” she whines, sounding like a wounded animal.

Emily loses it. Lindsey can’t help it. She starts laughing, too.

“Stop laughing!” Emma says, using her grip on Emily’s jacket to pull herself to her feet. “I might need an ass transplant and you’d be an exact match, you know.” 

-  
While the turkey cooks, Mal has planned a game night. They had to get rid of _ Monopoly _ because Kelley had mentioned that Alex once fought some over a game. Pat and Dansby would be at a disadvantage to four doctors with _ Scrabble _ . So they’d settled on _ Life. _

Alex draws a card that indicates she’s going to get divorced. She slides it across the table towards Kelley and says “I think I got your card.” 

A timer in the kitchen goes off, saving Mal from dissipating the awkwardness. “That’s the casserole! Be right back.” She sends Dansby a pleading glance as she gets up. 

Dansby clears his throat and takes a spin. He lands on a square that has him draw a card and tells everyone gleefully that all of his medical bills have been paid for by a wealthy donor. 

“That would be a good one for real life. Right, Alex?”

Alex glances away from Kelley and tells him she wasn’t paying attention. He repeats himself. Alex laughs, which Dansby takes as a small victory. “Yeah. If only there was a card that said _ donor heart f- _” 

Alex’s phone rings on the table. She looks down. This has happened a couple of times today and each time, she’s flipped the phone facedown and gone on with the game. This time, though, she snatches the phone up and answers it. Her voice is muffled because she takes the call on the potch. 

Sam clears her throat. “So, Kelley, are you going to stay for dinner?”

“Depends.” Kelley’s watching Alex through the frosted living room window. She pulls her gaze to Sam instead when she asks what it depends on. “If my ex-wife kicks me out or not. Or I guess if her girlfriend does?”

Pat and Dansby lock eyes. Pat nods subtly. “Pat, do you want a drink?”

“Yeah, that’d be great.” 

“Come on.” They stand and duck into the kitchen. Sam gives her husband a pout and he just mouths an _ I’m sorry! _ ss he goes. 

“Emily’s dating?”

“I mean I assume she and Lindsey are back together.” Sam doesn’t say anything but that says enough. Kelley straightens in her chair a little bit. “They’re not? Why?”

Sammy isn’t going to say anything. Firstly, she doesn’t know the whole story. Second, the first rule of residency is don’t talk about residency. She just had to move to this program from Cary. she’s not about to make the next five years worse on herself by pissing off her co-residents. 

She’s saved from even making an excuse because Alex bursts back into the house. “Where’s Swanson?”

“Hiding,” Kelley says. “Alex, what-”

“Dansby, get your ass in here!” 

He has a mouthful of store-bought pumpkin pie, but he does. “What’s up?”

“That was the hospital. They’ve got you a heart. Drop the pie and let’s go.”

-  
Tobin looks across the table and past her. “Who’s choosing the music?” 

The anesthesia resident sitting at the computer and monitoring their patients vitals sticks her hand up and glances away from the book she’s been reading for the last hour. “Technically it’s the season.”

Rose sees Tobin’s eyes narrow even with the mask. Tobin is the kind of person who doesn’t listen to any Christmas music before Black Friday and this new resident, one of the displaced transfers, is throwing off her groove. 

Rose tries not to laugh. She really does. But Tobin asks “What’s your name?” And Rose knows this poor kid is in for it.

“Abby. I’m from the Cary prog-”

“Well, Abby, I know we haven’t met and normally I’m cool with whatever music in my OR, but I’d really rather no Christmas music until it’s actually Christmas season.”

To Rose’s surprise -and mild horror- Abby from Cary, North Carolina scoffs (scoffs!) at Tobin and turns her chair towards Tobin. “Isn’t it technically the Christmas season now?”

Rose doesn’t take her eyes off of the surgical field. She focuses on cutting. She’s good at that. 

Tobin breaths out through her nose. Maybe she counts to three. She does close her eyes for a second. Then she just says “No. Put on something else.”

With a sigh, Abby does. Some pop song filters over the speakers and a muscle in Tobin’s jaw twitches. She goes back to guiding Rose to the wishbone. 

They find it easily. Someone’s pager goes off. Abby checks it for them. “It’s the ED for you, Dr. Heath.” 

Tobin sighs again. “Call them back. Put it on speaker.”

One of the ED residents answers. “Hi, Dr. Heath. Sorry to bother you…” Rose knows this is going to be a bullshit consult before the information even leaves his mouth. “We’ve got a GSW in the ED that needs looked at.” 

Rose almost drops the forceps she’s holding. The wishbone is cool, but trauma is cooler. There’s blood and where there’s blood, there’s usually surgery. She raises her hand like she’s answering a question in school. Tobin just looks at her. 

“What?”

“If you want, I can take this one?” Tobin arches her eyebrows. “I just mean, you found the wishbone. You should probably finish. Right?” 

Tobin shrugs. “Page me if you need anything.” Rose grins and steps away from the table to disrobe. 

When she gets to the ED, she asks for her patient’s room number and heads in that direction. When she pulls the curtain back, she finds Lindsey and Emily on either side of the gurney. “What the-” Her patient is laying on her stomach, gown open in the back, a slab of paper towels covering one ass cheek with what looks like duct tape. 

“We didn’t have much to work with,” Lindsey says defensively. 

Rose freezes with her mouth hanging half-open. Emily snaps a picture on her phone, which snaps her out of it. “What happened?”

“Hunting accident,” Emma says from the bed.

“This idiot accidentally shot herself,” Emily says. 

Rose presses a hand to her forehead. Then she shakes her head and puts her game face on. She steps into the room, pulls on gloves, and nudges Emily aside so she can get closer. “Can you be more specific? How many shots and did you see an exit wound or-”

“Just one shot and it’s still in there. I wouldn’t be here if it popped out. I have a doctor in the family.” 

Rose sighs. Emma’s spunkier than her sister. It would be amusing if she wasn’t trying to take care of her as a patient. “Can you guys, like, get out of here?” Rose asks Lindsey and Emily. They shrug. Lindsey sneaks behind the curtain automatically. 

Emily hovers for a second. She gives her sister a pat on her good butt cheek and then says “Have fun, Rosie!” with a wink. 

Rose is going to kill her. 

“This might sting a little.” Rose pulls off the makeshift bandage and Emma breathes out through clenched teeth all the while. The wound is clean and the bullet isn’t lodged very deep. She could probably get it with a set of forceps, but the way Emma’s wiggling, she knows she’s going to have to numb it up. 

“Okay sit still.”

“Easy for you to say. You don’t have a bullet in your ass.”

“Whose fault is that?” Rose says as she gathers some supplies from the cabinet in the corner of the room. She loads a needle up with three milliliters of lidocaine. “Just gonna numb you up. Little pinch.”

“Motherfucker,” Emma hisses and Rose blinks.

“I haven’t even done it yet.”

“Sorry. It was anticipatory.” 

“On three.” Rose counts it down but inserts the needle on _ two _ . By the time she says _ three _ the medicine is already injected. 

Emma curses anyway. “It’s already in,” Rose tells her. Emma pouts, props her chin on her crossed arms, and wiggles a little bit. 

“You gotta stop moving or you’re gonna end up with another scar.”

“Is it at least gonna look cool?”

“No.” Rose picks up the forceps and pokes at the exposed skin with the blunt end. “Feel that?” 

“Nope,” Emma pops the _ p _ in a very Sonnett way. Rose tries not to think about where those freckles go as she works the bullet out of the tissue. She drops it into a bedpan along with the forceps and leans over the bed so that Emma can see.

“Why are you showing it to me?”

“Some people like to keep them. As...souvenirs or something, I guess.”

Emma cranes around to look at Rose properly for the first time since she entered the room. She pauses, giving her a onceover and rolling her eyes in an exaggerated way. “Why would I want to remember the day I accidentally shot myself?”

“Are you drunk?” Rose asks as she pulls a couple of steri strips from their package. Stitches won’t hold here and it’s not a very big laceration anyway. She applies the strips to keep the wound closed and then covers it with a gauze pad. 

“No. I just had one beer.”

“You shouldn’t drink and hunt.”

“Thanks, doc. I’ll keep that in mind. Are we done here?”

Rose stands up and tosses her gloves away. “In a minute. I’m going to get you a dose of antibiotic so it doesn’t get infected.”

“Like pills?”

Rose smirks at her as she leaves the room. “Nah, a shot in the ass. Don’t worry. We’ll use the good cheek.”

On her way out of the ED, she swears she passes Dansby, but he walks right past her. 

She _ definitely _ passes Alex, who looks like she’s on a mission. She also knows Alex is off today, not that she memorized Alex’s work schedule or anything. “Alex, what’s up?” 

“I’ve got a surgery.” Before Rose can ask, Sam Mewis walks in after Alex. “Come on, Mewis. We’ve got to get in there and take a look at the heart to make sure it’s viable. No time to lose.”

“You’re doing a transplant?”

“Hopefully.”

“Do you need any hel-”

Alex shakes her head. “I already have a resident. Does it look like I need someone else to stare at me and tell me what a good surgeon I am? Sam, don’t just stand there. Get in that OR and tell me what I need to know.” 

Rose’s pager goes off. She takes it.

-  
Sam walks into OR 3 just as the patient starts coding. The rhythm strip on the monitor goes into wide waves and Tobin asks for the defibrillator and has everyone clear. She shocks him once, twice, three times, but they never get a rhythm back. 

The flatline buzzes on the monitor. “Turn it off,” Tobin barks and Abby does. It’s the first time Sam’s seen her at work. They live together but barely see each other in the hospital at all. She makes a face. Sam doesn’t react to her. 

Alex walks into the room and swears under her breath.

“What happened?”

“He crashed as soon as I started closing. There was nothing I could do.” She walks right by Alex without saying anything else. Alex pulls her scrub cap off. 

“I hate this part,” Sam sighs.

“Me, too. Let’s go tell him not to bother getting admitted.” 

-  
Three hours later, after sewing up an entire family who got into some kind of literal food fight, Rose finally makes it back to the locker room to change and head to dinner. Her phone’s dead, but the clock on the wall says it’s after seven, which means she’s late for dinner. Mal is going to be pissed.

As she’s pulling on her sneakers, Emily and Lindsey walk in. They all look at each other for a second. 

“Why are you guys still here?” 

“I was checking on patients.”

“And I was taking care of some administrative stuff.” 

“And Dansby is…”

“He’s coming home with us. Just getting discharged from the ED now.”

Emily breathes out heavily. “At least Sam and Pat are there” As if summoned by her name, Sam walks into the room. 

“Shit,” Rose says.

“So Mal is stuck with Pat?” Emily asks, stifling a laugh. 

“And Kelley,” Sam replies. The other three stare at her.

“What?”

“Why?”

“What’s Kelley doing at my house?”

Sam looks up from her locker. “Oh right. Um, she said she wanted to talk to you, Lindsey. But then Alex invited her to stay?”

Lindsey grabs Emily’s hand and threads their fingers. “Come on. We gotta rescue Mal.”

-  
All six of them get home at the same time., with an extra guest. Emma wouldn’t go home to her family with a bruised ego _ and _ ass.

Lindsey leads them to the porch and they troop into the dining room in a line. Dansby bends down to kiss Mal as he walks in and takes the seat next to her. Rose sits on her other side. Kelley’s at the far end of the table and Alex gravitates towards her. Sam finds Pat in the kitchen nibbling on bread because he hasn’t eaten all day and pulls him into the dining room with everyone else. 

Lindsey pulls out a chair that Emma sits in in front of her sister. Shaking her head, Lindsey pulls out the only remaining one and Emily sits down. Lindsey drags one of the kitchen stools in and squeezes in between the Sonnetts. 

Mal stands up. Her expression is unreadable. For a second, it seems like she’s going to yell at them all. Her shoulders are raised and she’s got both palms flat on the table. But all she ends up saying is “Let’s eat.”

Emily raises her hand. Mal nods at her. “Shouldn’t we maybe say grace?” She keeps babbling even though no one reacts poorly. “I mean I know we’re not all religious but on a holiday like this especially it’s important to give thanks, right?”

Lindsey gives her knee a squeeze under the table. Dansby clears his throat. 

“I’ll give it a go if no one else wants to.” Emily’s relieved she doesn’t also have to lead the prayer and she gives him a thumbs up. Lindsey takes that hand. Emma takes the other one in a show of solidarity so no one else seems to notice the way Lindsey links their fingers on Emily’s knee while Dansby asks for good health and food to eat throughout the year and gives thanks that they all get to be together and for letting him meet the most beautiful woman in the world-

“-who’s gonna eventually get me a new heart. Thanks, Alex Morgan. And also thanks for helping me to meet Dr. Mallory Pugh because she’s the second best thing that’s ever happened to me. I think this is the part where I say Amen?”

Emily grins at him and he says “Amen. Let’s eat."  
  
-  
After dinner, Lindsey drives Emma and Emily home, partially as an excuse to get away from Kelley before she corners her and mostly because she’s not ready to say goodbye to Emily just yet. When they get to Emma’s place, there are Christmas lights already strung along the front porch and in the windows. Lindsey can see their mom decorating the tree. 

“Tobin would hate this.” Lindsey can’t stop her thoughts from tumbling out of her mouth. 

Emma rolls her eyes as she gets out of the car. “Yeah. Normally I wait until this weekend but my mom’s obsessed. Thanks for the ride. And, hey, congrats on officially becoming a Sonnett today.” She winks at the pair as she gingerly makes her way up the steps and into the house. 

Emily reaches to turn down the radio and turns in her seat to face Lindsey. 

“So.”

“So…”

The thing that strikes Lindsey is that the quiet doesn’t feel awkward, not between her and Emily. It feels natural. They fill it when they need to but not just to stop it from being quiet. Emily finally speaks after a prolonged silence. “I don’t really wanna go back in there.”

Lindsey looks at her. She’s still wearing those camo pants but she’s got an old Yale t-shirt on instead of the matching long-sleeve.Her hair is tied back in a messy bun that’s breaking free a little bit from its elastic. Lindsey wants to cut it for her if she doesn’t have time to get to the shop. 

“Why not?”

Emily shrugs. She takes her hair out of its bun and redoes it. It ends up messier than the first. “Everyone in there is so worried about me. It was bad enough when just my mom was there with us, but now my dad’s here too and they keep looking at me like they’re worried I’m gonna snap and I’m just tired of trying to convince everyone that I’m okay. I already have to convince my therapist so I can get back to doing what I love and I just wanna go home and be...me, you know?” 

Emily rattles that all off without stopping to take a breath. She takes a shaky one at the end and wipes at her eyes but there are no tears there. She seems surprised. “Anyway, thank you for having us for dinner. It was nice to see everyone again. I feel way more comfortable at your place even if Kelley and Alex were there.”

Lindsey turns all the way towards Emily in her seat. Emily is reaching for the handle but Lindsey reaches for her elbow. Emily looks back, confusion written all over her face. 

“Stay.”

“What?” 

“Stay with us.” When Emily opens her mouth to say no, Lindsey holds up her hand. “And it doesn’t have to be weird. Mal and Rose sleep together half the time anyway.”

“They do what?”

“Not like that,” Lindsey waves her off. “Just, they cuddle. Don’t tell Rose I told you that. But you can totally stay in Rose’s room and I’ll stay in mine. Mal always says it doesn’t feel like home without all of us there so, you know...Stay.”

Emily chews the inside of her cheek. She looks up at her sister’s front porch. The dogs are in the window. “What about Bagel? You guys didn’t want her around before. And I have the puppy now, too.”

“We just couldn’t take care of her because we work so much. You don’t have to do as many calls and with four of us it’s totally doable. Even with Fergy.”

Emily’s mouth quirks into a smile. “Fergy, huh?”

Lindsey shrugs. “He likes me. And I was trying names with him the other day. He likes Ferguson.” She lifts her arm to curl her fingers around the thin gold chain around Emily’s neck and tugs just enough that Emily takes the hint and leans forward just a bit. 

“So? Will you stay?”

Emily rests her forehead against Lindsey’s. They share the same air. No one moves.

“Yeah, I’ll stay.”

-  
The next day, Emily shows up to Becky’s office on time, but not early.

Becky is already inside. The door is open. Emily steels herself by counting to ten, holds her coffee firmly in two hands, and steps into the office. 

Becky takes her glasses off and points to the couch on one side of the office. It’s plush with several fluffy pillows. Emily sits and clutches one of those pillows in her lap. “Good morning, Emily. Should we get started?” 

“Where do you wanna start?” Emily asks while she pulls at the pillow’s tag. 

“At the beginning. Tell me about your childhood. And why you wanted to become a doctor in the first place.”

Emily whistles through her teeth. “We’re going to be here a while.”

“I have nothing but time.”

The problem, Emily thinks as she starts describing the town where she grew up, is that Emily _ doesn’t _ have unlimited time. 

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> soooo what did you think? remember i'm also on twitter and curioscat @cornerkix_


	14. holidaze

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Careful,” Kelley says as the doors slide open to the main hospital. “Sonny wouldn’t like it if we got too close.”
> 
> “I’m not sure Son would care. She doesn’t think about you much anymore.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy holidays, everyone! whatever you celebrate, this year will probably be much different than most for all of us. i hope this little gift makes you smile if only for a few minutes. 
> 
> this chapter got long. sorry about it.
> 
> there are some mentions of like...religion in here? they talk about putting the christ in christmas or something, idr. i just know it's in there. so warning for that, i guess.
> 
> as always, little proofreading + a spell check, so all mistakes are mine. have fun, stay safe, and pet a dog or something. 
> 
> (i will be hopefully posting a vaguely new year's themed chapter next week, but don't get used to this. i just happen to have some time off. onward!)

Emily has been to six sessions with Dr. Becky Sauerbrunn and she doesn’t really feel like they’ve talked about anything. They spent two sessions discussing Emily’s journey through a heavily Christian secondary school and spent another thirty minutes reliving the trauma of being the firstborn twin but feeling like she’s second best, but, other than that, Becky has mostly let Emily ramble about whatever she wants. 

She doesn’t feel like she’s any closer to getting back to work and she’s already thinking about the pile of bills being rerouted from Kelley’s place to Lindsey’s. Sure, Lindsey isn’t making her pay rent, but Emily insists on paying into the weekly grocery budget and the four of them split the utilities. And Bagel and Fergy’s organic dog food isn’t cheap. And don’t get her started on those student loans.

While the program director hasn’t kicked her from the residency, she also isn’t getting paid for going to therapy with Becky. She’s also falling behind her peers and while she knows that Christen will welcome her back with open arms when she’s cleared to return to work, she doesn’t want to be rusty. 

Every moment of free time, Emily has been reading, but her attention span has never been very good. So she’s switched to listening to this pediatrics podcast while working out and that seems to work better. 

It’s still nothing compared to direct patient care. And Emily _ misses _ it.

She’s just admitted this to Becky, actually, her frustration with this process seeping into her limbs, making her muscles tense and creeping into her voice, giving it a harder edge. 

Becky glances up from her notepad. Emily has never seen her actually write anything in it in all the hours they’ve spent together in this room. Every now and then Becky taps the capped end of her pen against the page, but she doesn’t think Becky has written anything about her at all. Emily doesn’t know how to be good at this. She’s good at some things (like soccer and her job and cooking) and bad at others (like holding her alcohol, being confident, and using her voice). 

She thinks she’s pretty bad at therapy. Emily isn’t sure you can be good at it. Why would someone good at therapy need to be in therapy in the first place?

“What do you miss most about it?”

Emily turns the fidget spinner in her hand. Becky does adolescent psychiatry, too. Emily thinks they set her up with Becky partially because of that. She counts the spins as she talks. “Everything,” is what comes out of her mouth first. 

Becky purses her lips. Before she can interrupt, Emily starts talking again. “I miss figuring out a problem and being able to fix it. I miss my coworkers. I miss helping people and families during hard times. But you wanna know what I miss the most?” Becky encourages her with a nod so Emily keeps going. “I miss talking to the kids. Kids are funny, you know? They don’t really have filters most of the time and, when they’re pretty young, they don’t usually care what people think.” 

Emily gets up from the sofa and walks to the wall of windows that lines the back of Becky’s office. She turns to look out at the inside of the hospital. From here, she can see parts of the main lobby. The hospital has decked it out for the season. There are no less than six Christmas trees with with multicolored lights lining the way to the elevators. As the hospital’s attempt at diversity, there’s also a giant menorah near the front of the lobby. There’s no sign of a nativity scene but there are a ton of fake snowmen just outside the main entrance.

Her favorite coffee cart is down there. There’s a pretty long line already. She thinks she sees Rose and Lindsey down there. Their heads are close together like they’re both looking at something on one of their phones. Emily wonders what it might be.

“Emily?” 

She jumps a bit in surprise. She forgot what she was doing for a second. “Sorry.”

“Remember what I told you the other day?”

Emily does. She parrots it back at her because she knows it’s what Becky wants to hear. “I don’t have to apologize in these four walls. Which, this isn’t really a wall, right? It’s all windows.”

“You were going to tell me what you miss the most about work.” 

Emily glances down at Lindsey. She doesn’t have to miss Lindsey at work because they share a house together now, but they’re still sort of walking on eggshells around each other. Emily makes her coffee in the mornings even though Lindsey gets up an hour and a half before Emily even rolls out of bed. The automatic timer helps with that. She sometimes leaves notes for Lindsey to find, but when Rose found the most recent one, she’d stopped doing that. 

So Lindsey isn’t really the thing she misses the most about work, even if she _ does _ kind of miss naps in the peds on-call room. 

“I miss being the person who tells my patients it’s okay to be scared because the world is big and bad and they’re sick but that I’m there in case they need something. I just miss the kids.” Emily says this to her own reflection in the windows. She still looks as tired as when she was working seventy hour weeks with dark circles under her eyes and greasy hair hidden under a Trailblazers ball cap she stole from Lindsey’s closet. 

“It sounds like you really care about your patients.”

“Yeah,” Emily agrees, turning back to face Becky again. “I really do.”

“Why do you think that is?”

Emily takes a deep breath. She thought they might be done for the morning and that she could catch Rose and Lindsey before they had to be back for rounds. When Emily looks back at the line to the coffee cart, they’re gone.

She walks back to the couch and flops into it. “Because once I was that kid.”

-  
“Shit.”

“I know you’re constipated, Lindsey, but you’ll go like thirty minutes after another coffee.” When Lindsey doesn’t even react to her joke, Rose glances up from her phone. Lindsey is frowning at her own cell and Rose takes a step closer to look at the text message on the screen. 

“Why is Tobin’s contact name in your phone the chocolate bar emoji?”

“Heath bar,” Lindsey says without missing a beat. “But that’s not the point.”

“Yeah, that sucks, dude. What do you think Kelley wants with you? I bet it’s a bunch of scut to get back at you for sleeping with and then stealing back her wife.”

Rose steps away from Lindsey and towards the coffee cart. She rolls her eyes when Lindsey says that she and Emily aren’t even together. “Yet. It’s only a matter of time.” 

“I told her I’m ready but that’s her prerogative.”

“So you’re waiting for Emily Sonnett to make a choice?” Rose asks as she opens their group chat with Sammy, Mal, and Emily. “You might be an attending before that happens.”

“Shut up. What’s going on in there?”

“Mal wants to do secret Santa.” Rose shrugs and replies that she’s in. “It’s better than having to buy crappy gifts for all of you losers.” She wiggles her eyebrows at Lindsey as they step up to the cart. “Maybe you’ll get Sonny and you can write her a poem declaring your love. That might work.”

“I hate you. Come on. One, two three.” Rose throws out scissors, like she always does so Lindsey tosses out rock like _ she _ always does and smashes Rose’s fingers with her fist. 

“You’re buying.”

“You’re cheating.”

“How?”

“You always win!”

“Play better, Lavelle.” Lindsey smiles as she turns to the barista. “A large black coffee, a large green tea, and a large iced vanilla latte with a double shot of espresso, please.”

-  
Lindsey has been avoiding the peds floor ever since Emily’s accident. It’s not that she _ hates _ pediatrics. It’s just harder than general surgery. The patients are smaller so the surgical field is smaller. They’re also younger so it’s worse when things go wrong.

Plus Kelley works in peds. 

Kelley also specifically asked for her for this case. Lindsey doesn’t know _ what _ case it is but she’s going to do her best to avoid having to work with Kelley much at all. She’s a surgical consult. The peds team consulted her. That means she can just speak with the intern or, if worse comes to worse, with Christen.

Lindsey very purposely avoids both the doctors’ lounge and the on-call room. 

She finds Christen at her usual spot. She tends to hang out in the nurses’ station after rounds. Lindsey offers a smile as she hands off Christen’s tea. “Hey. I heard you guys needed me?”

Christen thanks her profusely and takes the lid off of her cup to inhale some of the steam. “Well, Alex asked for Rose or Mal but Kelley wanted you for this one.” Lindsey tries to keep her expression normal but because Christen giggles, she guesses her eyes must have bugged out at least a little bit. 

“This is a cards case?”

“Yep. Heart transplant. She’s in room 311.”

Lindsey takes a long pull of her latte. She kind of wishes it were something stronger or that she was working with literally anyone other than Alex and Kelley. She could handle one of them. But both? She’s not sure _ anyone _ can handle both of them.

At least Rose will be jealous.

“What’s her name?”

“Jayda. She’s six.”

Lindsey finishes her coffee before heading over there. She’s been thinking about God a lot more lately because of the holiday season. Emily has a bible by her bed and she found her reading the Christmas story out of it one morning they both had off. She’d asked Emily to read it out loud and she’d been a little bit awkward about it at first, but by the end she sounded more confident.

Lindsey bought a tiny nativity scene to put under the tree Mal had decorated but Fergy keeps trying to chew on Joseph, so they moved it to a shelf instead. 

So, anyway, Lindsey thinks about God now and she doesn’t know why God would make a kid be born with a broken heart. Lindsey has earned her broken heart in her twenty-six years but a baby? It just doesn’t seem fair.

Room 311 is decked out in Christmas decorations. There is a miniature tree on the bedside table. There are string lights draped along one wall and paper snowflakes hanging from the ceiling. Jayda’s blanket has snowmen on it. 

The kid laying in bed looks unimpressed, but her mom is wearing a Christmas sweater. Alex is already in the room with her stethoscope on the patient’s chest. 

“About time you showed up,” she says as soon as the stethoscope is back around her neck. “Jayda, this is Dr. Horan. She’s going to be picking up your new heart for me so I can put it in here.” Alex taps Jayda’s chest lightly. 

“Can you believe it, Jay?” Her mother wipes away some tears. “Santa brought you a new heart for Christmas.”

Jayda looks past Alex in Lindsey’s direction and rolls her eyes. “Tell the fatass I don’t want it.” 

Lindsey can’t clamp back the surprised laughter that tumbles from her lips. Jayda’s mom glares at her first. Then Alex does. 

“Outside.”

“Sorry,” Lindsey says once they’re in the hallway. “She just caught me off guard.”

“If you’re going to be on my case I’m going to need you to act like you’ve heard a curse word before, Horan.” Alex jerks her head and Lindsey follows her a few paces down the corridor, out of earshot of Jayda and her mom. 

“Jayda got her first heart transplant when she was only three days old but it hasn’t grown as well as she has. She needs this heart to live. Her mom is a single parent and she has no other children. Do you want to make this woman hate Christmas for the rest of her life?”

Kelley walks up beside them right then. “Don’t you think you’re being a _ tad _ dramatic, Al?” She holds her thumb and pointer finger about an inch apart. Alex doesn’t glare at _ her _ but she does shrug.

“No. I want to get this kid home for Christmas.”

“And we will. Lindsey, you ready to go pick up a heart?” 

“Sure.” She looks at Alex. “When are we going?”

Alex gives her a look like she doesn’t know how Lindsey passed medical school, let alone matched into one of the top surgery residencies in the country. “I’m not.” She pulls her pager out of her pocket and waves it in the air. “I’m on call. You and Kelley get to go to Denver to pick it up.”

Lindsey pales. “Kelley?” She says first. Kelley waves. “...Denver? Like-”

“Your mom’s hospital, yeah. Have fun.” Alex walks away. 

“Your mom works at Children’s?”

“She’s the head of Heme/Onc.” Lindsey doesn’t ask if Kelley’s serious. Most people, especially people in pediatrics, know Dr. Horan by name. She’s not sure if Kelley’s just trying not to make her feel weird or if she genuinely didn’t realize.

“Wow, meeting the parents already. Don’t you think that’s a little fast?”

Lindsey doesn’t laugh. She steps around Kelley and heads for the elevator. “I’ll see you in the chopper.” 

-

“When you say you were one of those kids, do you mean you were a patient?”

Emily nods. She has to stand up again. Becky doesn’t seem to mind when she does laps around the sofa in the middle of sessions. It helps her focus. “I mean it was nothing like what some of these kids are going through. And I was older. I just hurt my knee pretty badly my junior year of high school and had to go through surgery and rehab.”

Emily remembers that game like it was yesterday. She was still playing as a midfielder back then. She’d turned to avoid an incoming tackle and the girl had slid right into her planted leg. Her knee buckled. She heard the _ pop._ And she knew immediately when Emma had to help support her to the sideline that she wasn’t going to play again that season. 

She worked her _ ass _ off to even be able to play part of her senior season. It decided her college choices because colleges don’t want a kid who’s injury prone, but she wound up at UVA and it was the best accident to happen...until it wasn’t.

“Emily? Where’d you go?”

She shakes her head to pull herself back to the present. She doesn’t like talking about this. Her future had been so sure and so set until that second injury. She’d only been a sophomore in college at that time, her major still undecided. 

“It was raining,” Emily says as she starts pacing Becky’s office. It takes her six steps to get to the back wall and six more to make it back to the sofa. She’s counted them before. She does so now in her head as she talks. “It was against Georgia, against my sister’s school. I played the ball perfectly to my forward and some girl came in hard for a tackle. I heard the pop and I dropped right away. And I’d already done surgery and rehab once. It didn’t seem worth it to try again.”

Becky taps her pen against the notebook. “Do you ever regret that decision?”

“All the time. I mean, I probably wasn’t going to go to a World Cup or anything, but I was a _ good _ soccer player. I thought I’d play professionally for a couple of years and then coach. And now I’m...here.”

Emily needed something to fill her time once she quit soccer. She took a child development class to fulfill a psychology requirement and a biology course to fulfill a science one and the rest was history. She buckled down to score well on the MCAT and got a handful of interviews, including one to UVA’s medical school. 

If she hadn’t hurt her knee, she wouldn’t have found what she loved to do as much (more than?) playing soccer. 

But she also wouldn’t have met Kelley O’Hara. She never would have gotten married and then cheated on. She might still believe in love in the way she used to. (She might not be so wary about starting over again with Lindsey Horan.)

But she probably never would have met Lindsey if she’d never hurt her knee, either. 

Becky sets her notepad aside and folds her hands in front of her. She’s leaning forward in her chair and Emily feels studied. She _ always _ feels studied by Becky, which she guesses is kind of the point, but she doesn’t really like the feeling. It makes her uncomfortable. She feels hot under her collar and starts pacing again. 

“Are you happy?” 

Emily turns the question over in her head a few times. She looks down at the Christmas lights. She shrugs.

“I think I could be. I could have been happy playing soccer, too.”

“Dwelling on it won’t change it.”

“Yeah,” Emily agrees with a dry laugh. “I can’t stop my mind from going there, though.”

“You can redirect. Think about all the kids you’ve helped since then.”

Emily tries. She thinks about that first patient on her first day of intern year and smiles when she remembers the kid throwing up on Lindsey’s shoes. 

“I guess I’m doing okay.”

“You’re doing great.” Becky picks up her notepad again. “How about a break?”

“Oh thank God. I’m exhausted.”

-  
When Emily gets to the cafeteria, Mal, Rose, and Sam are already there. Even though Lindsey is nowhere to be found, she makes her way over and takes the last available chair moments before Russell materializes. She drops into it backwards, straddling the seat with her arms draped over the back. 

“Hey, guys. What’s up?” She very pointedly ignores Russell glowering behind her. Mal presses her lips together to keep laughter from tumbling out. Sammy won’t look at her. 

Rose meets his eye and quirks a single brow. “Can we help you?”

“I thought this was a table for hospital employees, not patients on suicide watch.” Emily’s shoulders stiffen just slightly, but it’s enough for Rose to notice. She scoffs and flings a french fry at Russell.

“It’s a table for people I don’t hate, actually. So get going.” 

He rolls his eyes and glares at Emily all the way across the cafeteria. She can practically feel his eyes burning a hole in the back of her head. 

“Anyway,” Rose says like they hadn’t been interrupted at all. “Mal’s organizing secret Santa for the house plus Sammy. You in?” 

Emily feels a rush of affection for Lindsey’s friends. At some point they’d gone from _ Lindsey’s friends _ to her friends, too. They probably don’t realize how important that support system is for her, especially now. Her peds friends reach out, sometimes, but they’re busy, too, and haven’t seen her in person in weeks. 

Emily nods. “Sure, I’m down.”

“The budget is fifty bucks. Make sure to tell Dr. Rolex Horan.” Rose looks at Mal, who’s scribbling in a notebook. 

“Okay. Hey, Son, can we use your hat?” 

Emily pulls the baseball cap off of her head and combs her fingers through her messy hair while Mal scribbles all of their names down onto strips of paper and tosses them into the cap. Using the elastic on her wrist, she ties her hair back in a messy bun. 

“When are we doing this?” Rose asks as she plucks a piece of paper from the hat, looks at it, and tucks it into her scrub top pocket. She has a good poker face; Emily can’t tell if she’s happy about her pick or not. 

Sammy goes next. Then Mal. 

Emily makes a show out of rolling up her sleeves before choosing one of the two remaining slips of paper. She unfolds it in her lap and can’t help but laugh a little bit.

_ Lindsey _ stares back at her in loopy handwriting that doesn’t fit a doctor’s messy scrawl. She pockets the piece of paper and tries not to look like she’s having too much of an existential crisis about what to buy for her ex-and-not-quite-present. 

“So,” Emily says as she leans over to steal a fry from Rose’s plate. “What are the plans for Christmas dinner?” 

This sends Mal into a tirade about no one working on a holiday, this time, that makes Rose rolls her eyes and smile into her palm. Emily looks at Sammy, who is watching them, too. Sam shakes her head slightly.

Emily shrugs and shoots off a text.

_ she needs to get laid big time _

Sam’s eyes bug out a little bit as she reads the message under the table. 

Then she sends back _ actually i can probably help with that. _

Emily smirks as she sends back _ would pat be into that? _

_ not what i mean! you’ll see. are you coming out to joe’s this weekend? _

The surgery residents make impromptu meetups at Joe’s bar across the street their norm, but Emily wasn’t specifically invited. She shrugs. 

_ if you guys want me there _

A frown creases Sam’s forehead. She pauses to delete a few of the messages from their conversation thread before showing the screen to Rose, who is sitting beside her.

Rose rolls her eyes so hard Emily’s surprised they don’t fall out. “Are you serious, Sonnett? Do you need a hand-written invitation because Mal can probably get you one. Of course you’re coming out with us.”

Emily rests her chin on her crossed arms and smiles fondly. She’s glad she ended up in Portland, actually. She thinks she’ll tell Becky that after lunch.

-  
Lindsey doesn’t know why this is a two woman job. She’s more than capable of determining whether or not an organ is viable for transplant. She guesses it’s hospital policy for an attending to be present and since Alex is on-call, the only other option is Kelley. 

Why Kelley can’t pick up a heart in a cooler on her own Lindsey doesn’t know. The idea of being stuck in a confined space with her for any amount of time makes Lindsey’s heart race. She doesn’t show it as she steps onto the chopper. She’s never been in here before. It’s like flying first class. The seats are big enough to fit two people and lined with expensive leather. 

She takes the one at the front of the helicopter, just behind the barrier separating the pilot from them and as far away from Kelley, tucked into the back of the chopper with her legs drawn up beneath her and nursing a warm drink from a steaming mug, as possible. 

Lindsey adjusts her seat and leans it back. She didn’t sleep much the previous night because Bagel kept whining. She insists on sleeping with Lindsey but gets up throughout the night, probably to check on Emily, and always whimpers at her when she comes back. Lindsey isn’t sure what to do about it other than invite Emily into her bed, which seems inappropriate at this juncture. So she suffers through it.

She _ just _ drifting off to sleep when Kelley’s voice cuts through the quiet. 

“Can we talk?”

The hairs on the back of Lindsey’s neck stand on end. There’s something off about Kelley’s tone. She sounds serious. She remembers that Dansby told her that Kelley had showed up on Thanksgiving looking for her. She has no idea what Kelley wants to talk to her about but she figures it can’t be anything _ good_.

“I’m tired,” Lindsey says without looking at her. “Can it wait?”

“It can,” Kelley replies. Her voice sounds closer but Lindsey refuses to open her eyes to look, intent on keeping the illusion of sleep even though her heart is pounding and her mouth is very dry. “But if you keep avoiding me I’m just going to start talking.”

Lindsey sighs. “Can we at least wait until after we get the heart? Bagel kept me up until one.”

Kelley barks out a laugh and Lindsey is already so annoyed with her. “Yeah, she likes Emily.”

Lindsey doesn’t dignify it with a response. She doesn’t feel like talking to Kelley. She just wants to grab a quick nap while she can. Mercifully, Kelley seems to get the hint and shuts up. 

-  
When Emily gets back to Becky’s office for their afternoon session, she almost walks in on a meeting she probably isn’t supposed to know is happening. Christen is sitting in Emily’s usual spot on the couch, alternating eating a salad with talking with Becky. Becky’s picking at a sandwich but mostly looks like she’s pushing the food around her plate instead of actually eating it. 

Emily steps back and away from the door. They won’t be able to see her behind this strategically placed potted plant, but she can still see _ them _. Becky’s office door is open so the conversation spills out into the hallway, which seems like a HIPAA violation, actually. Emily cocks her head to the side and listens.

“-ow is Sonny doing?”

Emily’s stomach drops. She knows Christen is just worried about her. Everyone is. Still, she doesn’t like the idea that Becky would be discussing her progress (or lack thereof) with someone who is essentially Emily’s boss. 

“You know I can’t tell you that.” There’s a teasing edge to Becky’s voice. Emily wonders where they know each other from. She pulls out her phone and Googles Becky again. She’d looked her up after that first day of therapy, but she doesn’t remember anything other than being surprised that Becky graduated from UVA before going elsewhere for medical school. 

A quick scan of Becky’s Wikipedia bio tells her she and Christen probably went to the same school. Becky would have been in the medical college when Christen was in undergrad, but still. 

“I just want her to be okay.”

“She will be. She’s doing fine. That’s all I can say.”

“Can I ask when you think she’ll be back to work?”

“You can ask,” Becky replies with a shrug. “I can’t give you an answer, though. There’s no timetable for this kind of thing. It’s different from a physical ailment. There is no _ normal _ recovery time.”

“I know, I know.” Christen stabs a piece of lettuce with particular force. Then she says “You _ do _ think she’ll be able to come back though, right? We miss her on the floors.”

Becky nods. “Yeah, I think so. If that’s what Emily wants, anyway.”

Emily takes a step back. She never thought about it that way. She just kind of figured that medicine was her destiny. She hadn’t ever considered _ not _ coming back. 

What would she do if she couldn’t play soccer and didn’t want to be a doctor anymore? The line of thought hits a wall as soon as she thinks it. 

_ Does _she still want to be a doctor? Emily’s not sure.

Maybe _ that’s _ why they’re having her go to therapy in the first place.

-  
“Lindsey.” Kelley shakes her shoulder. “Get up. We have a heart to retrieve.”

Blinking a few times, Lindsey straightens up and stretches her arms over her head. Kelley is already out the door and halfway down the steps by the time Lindsey shrugs her jacket over her shoulders. She follows after her holding a cooler with a bright orange sticker on it that reads _ Human Organs _ in bold, block letters.

The wind whips at her face as Lindsey hurries across the tarmac and into the elevator. Her cheeks are red with cold as she huddles in next to Kelley. 

“Careful,” Kelley says as the doors slide open to the main hospital. “Sonny wouldn’t like it if we got too close.”

“I’m not sure Son would care. She doesn’t think about you much anymore.” Lindsey knows she sounds childish but she doesn’t really care.

Kelley turns around to face her as she walks out of the elevator, hands in the pockets of her white coat. “Good for her. Think you can find your way to the OR?”

“What are you gonna do?”

“You’re not the only person I have to talk to today. Jayda’s counting on us. Can you get there?”

Lindsey shrugs. “I’m sure I’ll find my way.”

“Cool. I’ll meet you back here after.”

With that, Kelley starts down the hallway. Lindsey turns left. She’s struck by how colorful the hallways are here. There’s a train painted on the wall with cartoon baby animals in each car. They each have a Santa hat taped to their heads for the season. She pauses to snap a picture of the baby giraffe and sends it to Sam because she knows she loves them.

Then she tucks her ID badge into her pocket and zips her pullover to hide her last name from view finds the closest nurses’ station. “Hi, I’m one of the docs from Providence Hospital.” When the guy behind the desk just blinks cluelessly at her, Lindsey says “I’m supposed to be picking up a heart for a patient of mine?” 

He hands her a stack of papers to sign. Lindsey does. He then directs her to room 511. 

Lindsey isn’t sure what she’s expecting, but as counts down to 511, she realizes the walls are getting progressively less colorful until she meets a set of motorized doors. They’re locked with a keycard panel. She looks around helplessly. There’s no one around. She checks her watch. It’s not like Jayda is actively dying, but they’re on a time crunch from the perspective that the heart can only exist out of the human body for so long. She’s not sure what happened to the kid who’s donating the heart, but they’re probably on a timeline.

“Lost Dr. Horan?” 

Lindsey’s shoulders jump up near her ears. She seriously considers walking the opposite direction, but Jayda’s face flashes before her eyes and she forces herself to turn around and face her mother. 

Dr. _Linda _ Horan hasn’t worn scrubs since her residency. She dresses professionally because _ if you look good, you’ll feel good _. Her high heels click against the linoleum as she approaches. Lindsey tucks the gold chain she wears beneath her t-shirt and smooths out the front of her scrubs, suddenly self-conscious of the fact that she hasn’t washed her hair in three days. 

Her mother envelops her in a hug in the middle of the corridor and Lindsey melts into it for half a second, letting the familiarity wrap her up. Then she remembers that she’s still on the clock and pulls away. 

“I gotta get in here. There’s a heart to recover.”

“I know, Lindsey.” Lindsey doesn’t think too hard about that. When her mom swipes her badge, the doors flick open with a _ whoosh _ and Lindsey marches towards room 511. For some reason, her mom follows.

Lindsey stops walking when she sees that 511 is just a PICU room. There’s a kid maybe a couple of years older than Jayda laying in bed with a breathing tube down his throat and bandages covering his head. His parents are holding each other in the corner of the room. 

Linda almost walks right into her. “Don’t stop walking in the middle of the hall, Lindsey. Didn’t anyone teach you any manners?”

“The parents are there,” Lindsey says, sounding dumbfounded. 

Her mom’s eyebrows dart back towards her hairline. “Yes. Where did you expect them to be? That’s their son.”

Lindsey’s tongue feels like sandpaper against the roof of her mouth. She doesn’t know what to say. Eventually, she comes up with “I thought the patient would already be in the OR. Kelley said-”

“You still have to get consent.” Linda looks at her with that Mom look, like she thinks Lindsey isn’t paying attention. “Where’s your resident?”

“I came here with an attending. I’m not sure where she-”

Lindsey hears Kelley’s voice. She peers around her mother to see that Kelley’s already in the room. Lindsey’s feet start moving before her brain catches up and suddenly she’s standing in this kid’s ICU room holding a clipboard in one hand and a bright red cooler in the other. 

The kid’s father glances away from Kelley and looks at her instead. His eyes are red-rimmed and there are dark circles under his eyes. Kelley follows his gaze to her and frowns in Lindsey’s direction.

“Dr. Horan, I told you to head to the OR.” She’s talking in a different tone than Lindsey’s used to. It’s the one Kelley uses when she talks to her patients, Lindsey thinks. It’s the tone she uses when she’s talking to children. “What are you doing here?”

“I asked a nurse where I was supposed to go.” Lindsey can’t look away from the patient -she looks down at the clipboard and sees the sticker naming the patient: Ryan Sullivan. She can’t look away from Ryan’s parents. His father is still staring at her, but he’s got his arm securely around his wife’s shoulders. She can’t take her eyes off of their son who is only breathing because a machine is doing it for him. 

Lindsey really wants to know what happened to him. (Another part of her hopes she never hears it.)

“I apologize. We’re not from here. We’re from another hospital where another kid is waiting on a heart to save her life. She’s been waiting for a long time.” Kelley goes back to ignoring Lindsey and Lindsey tries to blend into the wall. Ryan’s dad finally stops looking at her and she exhales a breath she didn’t know she was holding.

“Our son isn’t even gone.” Ryan’s dad’s voice cracks on the last word. “And you people are here to take him away from us.” 

“Jerry,” his mom says, her voice raspy but soft. “Let’s hear what Dr. O’Hara has to say.”

Kelley offers her a tissue and thanks her. “There’s nothing I can say to change what happened to your son. Parents aren’t supposed to outlive their kids. It’s one of the hardest things a person can go through and I can’t even imagine…” Kelley pauses and takes a deep, steadying breath. Lindsey mimics her.

“But Ryan can help a lot of other kids.”

“It won’t bring him back,” Ryan’s father growls. 

Kelley shakes her head. “Nothing will. But it can help him live on in some way.” 

That is the wrong thing to say. Mr. Sullivan’s face turns red. A vein in his neck is popping out as he says “Not to us.”

Kelley’s voice softens. “Of course not.But if you’re the type of people that searches for a reason in everything…”

Mrs. Sullivan has been quiet this whole time. She finally speaks up then. “Do you know any of the kids who RJ would help?”

“We do. We can’t really discuss-”

Lindsey talks over Kelley before she has the chance to finish her sentence. “She’s six. Her mom is obsessed with Christmas. The last thing she said to me before I headed over here to pick up her new heart was that she called Santa a fatass.” 

It makes Ryan’s mom laugh through her tears, which is sort of what Lindsey was going for. 

“Jer, I think it’s what Ryan would have wanted. That’s the kind of kid his heart should go to.”

Kelley slings an arm over Lindsey’s shoulders after they get parental consent. “Don’t ever take that risk again. It could’ve gone the opposite way.”

“Okay.”

“Go to the OR for real this time.”

“Okay.”

“Stop saying _ okay_.”

“Alright.”

-  
Emily walks into Becky’s office and sits down on the edge of the couch. Becky moves her glasses down her nose to look at her. 

“You okay?”

“I mean, if I was okay I don’t think I’d be here.” Emily smiles ironically. “No, I’m good. I think I’m supposed to be in Portland even if I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to be doing here.”Becky looks intrigued. She sits forward in her chair, too, and Emily leans towards her. 

“What do you mean?”

Emily inhales deeply. She counts to seven. She exhales and counts to five. Then she says “I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be working here but I think I found my people here. So Portland feels like home but I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to be doing here.”

“You worked hard to get where you are,” Becky says carefully. 

Emily nods. “Yeah and paying back all those loans would suck but I’m just...not sure.”

“That’s okay. You have time to figure it out. No one’s saying you have to go back to work tomorrow.”

“Yeah but they want me to.”

Becky hits her pen against her notebook again. “You heard us, huh? I knew I should have had Christen close the door.”

“I wasn’t, like, trying to eavesdrop. It just kind of happened.”

“Emily.” The way Becky says her name kind of reminds her of her mom when they were growing up. “You have to do what’s best for you not just what you think is expected of you.”

“What does that even mean?”

“That’s for you to figure out.”

“I’m kinda glad I’m not paying you for this.”

-  
Lindsey doesn’t get to scrub in to the harvest surgery. She just stands at the back wall of the OR, last in a line of about ten other physicians, clutching her cooler in both hands. The other doctors keep checking their watches. Lindsey can’t take her eyes off of the field. 

Ryan is braindead. Logically, Lindsey knows this. Still, watching the resident hand off pieces of Ryan to the other physicians makes her skin crawl. She watches someone take a kidney. Someone else gets the other one. The liver is divided into at least four pieces. 

Lindsey has to wait. The heart is the last piece of the puzzle. The number of people leaning against the back wall dwindles to nothing. The only people left in the room with Lindsey are the two surgeons, the anesthesiologist, the scrub nurse, and Ryan himself. 

Before they remove the heart, the nurse turns the sound on the monitor off so they all don’t have to hear the flatline. The rhythm stutters and fades and Lindsey feels wetness on her cheeks before she even realizes she’s crying. 

“They save the best for last,” the resident tells her as he carefully lifts Ryan’s heart out of the chest cavity and deposits it in Lindsey’s cooler among the ice. There’s a moment of disconnect as Lindsey pops the lid on the cooler. It almost feels like she’s bringing a six pack to a college party instead of carrying somebody’s life literally in her hands. She wipes subtly at her eyes as she leaves the operating room.

“You good?” Kelley asks her as soon as she reaches the locker room.

Lindsey clears her throat. “Why wouldn’t I be? Let’s get out of here before my mom corners us again.”

“I wanted to meet your mom.”

“Some other time. We’re on a time crunch, right?”

Kelley sighs and follows her down the hall, back to the elevator and to their chopper. 

-  
Emily is on her way to bring Christen a cup of hot tea when the code is called. Her brain stutters even as her feet take her to room 311. A woman is standing next to the bed where her daughter must be laying, wailing at the top of her lungs. Nursing staff are trying to corral her so they can get to work. Emily’s gaze flicks to the monitor overhead. It’s running in wide, spiky waves. She feels her own heart sink.

“Excuse me, ma’am, can you step outside for a sec?” The woman looks at her, dressed in an oversized hoodie and baggy sweats, like she’s crazy. 

And she kind of is, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t know this is an emergency.

“Trust me. I’m a doctor.” Emily knows she looks nothing like one. When she’s not at work, she doesn’t. She likes to blend in when she’s not at the hospital. The last thing she wants is her patients’ parents to come up to her in the grocery store. 

“She is,” nurse Tyler says with a firm nod. “Dr. Sonnett, what next?”

Emily slides into the spot vacated by the kid’s mom. She holds out her hands. “Charge the defibrillator to 2 mgs per kg. I’m starting CPR.” She does compressions to a Bee Gees song while the nurses charge up the equipment. 

“Charged.”

Emily takes the paddles while Tyler opens the kid’s gown in the front. She’s so _ little_. Emily swallows around a lump in her throat. “Clear!” She puts the paddles on the little girl’s chest and the defibrillator fires. Her eyes flick towards the monitor. It fades to a flatline for a second and Emily feels her heart stop, too. 

Then it flickers back to the wild rhythm from before.

“Resume CPR.”

She and Tyler alternate compressions for two minutes. “Hold compressions.” Emily checks for a pulse. It’s there but still as wild. The monitor still shows V. fib. “Charge to 4 mgs per kg.” 

Tyler has it precharged for her and hands the paddles back. Emily takes a deep, steadying breath and puts the pads on the child’s chest. “Clear!” The machine fires again. The monitor flatlines. So does Emily.

Then a normal rhythm appears. The kid coughs and tries to sit up and Tyler gets her propped up on her pillows. She’s got a little bit of a glazed over look in her eyes but eventually her eyes land on Emily. 

“Who are you?”

“You can call me Sonny.”

“I’m Jayda.” She pushes herself up against the pillows and narrows her eyes at Emily. “Why didn’t you just let me go?”

Emily stares at her and tries to keep her expression neutral. “Well, I’m a doctor. It would look bad if I just let patients die on me, you know?”

Jayda looks like she’s thinking about it. She shrugs. “Did they get the heart yet?” Emily doesn’t know anything about this kid or her condition, but from what little information she can piece together, she thinks she has a vague idea of what is going on. 

“I don’t think so.”

“Can you call them and tell them to give it to someone else?”

“Jayda Lynn!” 

Her mother sounds scandalized. Emily doesn’t even look at her. She crosses her arms and looks at Jayda. “Why?”

Jayda leans towards her so she can tell Emily in a whisper. Emily meets her halfway. “Because some other kid had to die for me to get a heart. I don’t want that kind of present for Christmas. Maybe somebody else does.”

Emily nods. “I mean, I know Santa.” Jayda doesn’t look like she believes her. Emily pulls out her cell phone and shows her a contact without a name that does have a dog with a Santa hat as the contact photo. “I can always call him and make sure he brings you a…”

“Puppy.”

“-a puppy too. It’s not a one and done deal.”

Jayda sighs heavily and flops back against the pillows. “Fine, but I better get the puppy.”

Emily presses her lips together. “I’ll let him know.”

-  
When Lindsey makes it back to the helicopter that will take her back to Providence, Kelley is already inside. She’s tucked into a seat near the back with her feet pulled up and using her jacket as a blanket. At first, Lindsey thinks she’s asleep and that she’ll get to spend the ride home in peace. 

She couldn’t be so lucky.

Kelley’s eyes are still closed when she speaks, but she’s very much awake. “Can we talk now?”

Lindsey throws herself into a window seat and stares outside. She wishes she had her headphones because Emily made her a perfect, broody playlist for how she’s feeling right now. She’d much rather listen to that than whatever it is Kelley O’Hara has to say. 

Then she thinks about how Kelley is technically her senior and how she could make the next five years of her life hellish and shrugs. “I guess.”

“Don’t sound so excited.” Kelley stands and stretches and Lindsey thinks about hopping out of the chopper. Then the engine starts and they lift off and she’s trapped. She wonders what would happen if she pulls the _ emergency _ chord. 

“Move over,” Kelley says as she forces herself into the row. Lindsey folds her limbs in as much as possible so they’re not touching even when Kelley angles her body towards her. 

“So.”

Lindsey looks at her. Kelley looks back. Lindsey clears her throat. “So…”

“Are you and Emily…?” Kelley doesn’t actually ask anything so Lindsey doesn’t answer. She keeps staring at Kelley, daring her to keep eye contact, but she drops her gaze first. Lindsey feels a little smug about it. 

“Are you seeing Emily?” 

“I don’t really think that’s any of your business,” Lindsey replies as soon as the words are out of Kelley’s mouth. They’re not. They live together and Bagel cries all night if one of them doesn’t sleep in the same bed so they cuddle, sometimes, but that’s all it is. They’re going slow and that’s fine with Lindsey.

She just doesn’t want Kelley to know. Even though Emily doesn’t want to be with Kelley anymore, she’s still her wife. The paperwork hasn’t been finalized. Kelley’s not wearing her ring anymore but Lindsey’s still a little bit jealous of her. Kelley knows where she stands with Emily. Lindsey’s still not sure. 

Kelley takes a breath through her nose and exhales through her mouth. “Look,” she pauses like she’s changed her mind halfway through. She turns towards Lindsey, tucks her legs up beneath her, and waits for Lindsey to stop picking at the chipped polish on her fingernails until she says anything else. 

“I care about Emily.”

“Did you care about her when you slept with Alex?” The words explode before Lindsey’s brain can stop them and she rubs the back of her neck in an attempt at staving off the blush.

Kelley nods. “I did. It was a bad situation and I’d be happy to tell you my side of that over beers sometime, but this isn’t about me.”

“Okay?” 

“Emily is important to me. Just because we’re not together doesn’t mean I don’t still care. And I think you’ll be good to her but just in case Emma hasn’t given you _ the talk _-”

“Hang on.” Lindsey can’t stop herself from laughing. “Are you trying to tell me you’ll hurt me if I hurt Son? _ You_?”

Kelley doesn’t even look hurt. She shrugs and leans in towards Lindsey. “I’m just saying that you should make a move and not wait for her or else you might be waiting two years.”

Lindsey leans back in her seat and crosses her arms. “I got five years at Providence.”

Kelley leans towards her, closing the gap. “Peds residency is only three.”

“What?”

“Peds is only three years. You really wanna risk it waiting on Sonny to get her courage?”

Lindsey thinks about it. She doesn’t say anything, but the back of her neck is suddenly itchy. 

Kelley seems satisfied. She goes back to her seat.

Lindsey checks her phone and smiles when she sees a few messages from Emily. 

She can be patient. But she can’t wait forever. 

-  
Lindsey doesn’t want to let go of the cooler once they get back to Providence Hospital. She’s been carrying it around all day and now there’s precious cargo inside of it. Reluctantly, she hands it over to the transplant team when they get back inside and she feels like someone cut off her arm. 

“So should I go scrub in now?”

Kelley blinks at her. “Uh.”

“Uh?” _ Uh _doesn’t sound very reassuring. Kelley grimaces. “What?”

“Alex requested Dr. Lavelle for the procedure. She’s Alex’s intern. You’re mine today.”

Lindsey stares at her. Ice fills her heart and pumps through her veins. “So what,” she says, laughing humorlessly. “I was just supposed to tag along and carry the heart around all day and I don’t even get to cut?”

Kelley shrugs. “You don’t always get to do surgery on your consults, do you?”

“I’m a surgeon.”

“You’re an intern. Alex wants Rose. Alex gets Rose. You can still watch in the gallery.” Lindsey kind of doesn’t want to. She’d rather troll the ER for procedures or potential cases. But she thinks about Jayda and changes course to go up to the gallery instead. 

When she gets there, she finds Mal and Sammy are already there. That doesn’t surprise her. What _do_es catch her a little off guard is that Emily is sitting there too. 

Lindsey stands awkwardly in the entrance to the gallery. She might have stood there the entire surgery if not for Russell elbowing his way past her to plop down into the only vacant seat on the back bench. 

“Twenty bucks says she drops it on the way.” He holds the cash up.

“Fifty says she lets her close,” Mal says without even bothering to look at him.

“I’ll toss in another fifty if you’re not scared.” It’s Emily who says this and that makes Lindsey step into the room. Several heads turn in her direction but not Sammy’s. She seems unable to tear her eyes off of the screen showing the surgical field. 

Emily smiles softly when she sees her and scoots over enough to make room for her on the bench. Lindsey squeezes in between her and Mal and clasps her hands in her lap to keep them to herself. She’s not really sure where she and Emily stand but she knows they’re taking it slow. She’s trying to respect that.

Emily leans over to hook her chin on Lindsey’s shoulder like it’s the most natural thing in the world, though, and Lindsey’s spine stiffens. Emily notices and sits up again, offering her a small frown. 

“How was your day?” Lindsey asks while Alex makes the first cut. She’s not even looking at Emily when she asks, too busy trying to run through the steps for the surgery that’s happening below. 

“It was...good.” Emily doesn’t really sound sure about it. She’s not looking at Lindsey, either, but she also doesn’t like surgery so she’s examining her shoelaces instead. “I get to come back. After the holidays.”

“Son, that’s great!” 

“And I ran a code today? On Jayda. I saved her life before Alex got the chance to, so that’s pretty cool.”

Lindsey looks away from where Rose is cutting. “You did what?”

“She went into V. fib and I was walking by so I just...did it. I ran the code and shocked her and got her back.”

“A Christmas miracle.”

“I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to come back but then that happened and I felt really good about it. Like what if I hadn’t been there?” Emily is rambling. It’s cute. She’s talking quietly but quickly and Lindsey is so endeared. “Obviously another doctor would have come along and probably would’ve saved her, too, but I did that. Me. And now she’s gonna get to have a bunch more Christmases even if she hates Santa.”

Lindsey laughs. “She called him a fatass. It was the best thing to happen to me today.”

Emily wiggles her eyebrows. “The best, huh?” She asks, pressing her thigh into Lindsey’s in a way that isn’t exactly friendly. Lindsey clasps her hands more tightly.

“Yeah.”

Emily opens her mouth to say something, but then the heart monitor in the OR starts blaring. Jayda’s heart rate slows to the 60s, then the 40s, then flatlines completely and Emily can’t stand to watch. She’s in the absolutely best hands (Alex Morgan’s hands are literally in her thoracic cavity) but that doesn’t make it any easier for Emily to breathe.

She gets up and leaves, passing Kelley on the way out of the gallery.

Emily barely makes it into the stairwell before she sinks to the floor.

It’s only seconds later she feels someone sit down next to her. 

Lindsey is so solid and present and real, pressed against Emily’s side from shoulder to foot and leaning into her as a gentle yet firm reminder that she’s right there. She holds her hand palm up and Emily grabs onto it like a lifeline. Lindsey’s thumb traces the back of her hand lightly. 

“I feel the floor. It’s cold. But you’re warm. I see the same flu shot poster from three months ago. I taste worn out gum. I smell your lavender shampoo. I hear you breathing.” Lindsey purposely evens out her breathing and Emily mirrors her. She brings her other hand to hold Lindey’s between both of hers and presses her face into the crook of Lindsey’s neck. 

“I’m glad you’re here,” she mumbles.

“Nowhere else I’d rather be.”

-  
Jayda makes it to Christmas.

-  
Lindsey’s house looks like Santa’s workshop exploded. One evening Lindsey had gotten off of her shift and walked into a tornado of tinsel and holly. Mal had somehow convinced Rose to help her decorate the large tree in the living room. That was one of only three trees in Lindsey’s house. 

(They’d asked her to put the angel on top of the tree but she’d just gotten off of a thirty-six hour shift and went straight to bed instead.)

It looks nice from the street. Emily clutches a hastily wrapped package in her pocket and admires the multicolored lights in the window for a few seconds. She worries her gift might be all at once too much and too little. She’s thinking about putting this present back in her car and making a quick run to CVS for something less personal.

Before she has the chance to do that, though, Rose walks by and knocks her shoulder into Emily’s. “What are you waiting for, Son? An invitation?”

“You offering one?” Emily follows Rose up the porch steps and kicks her boots against the top step to clean off the snow before following Rose inside. She kicks off her shoes as soon as she gets inside and shuffles into the living room in socked feet. 

Mal is laying on her back with her head in Dansby’s lap and he’s trying (and failing) to braid her hair. Lindsey is sprawled across the couch stringing popcorn but she’s really mostly eating it and Sammy keeps asking her to try and throw one in the air so she can catch it. For some reason Rose comes out of the kitchen with Emma. They both have a beer in hand. 

Emily feels like she’s home. 

“What are you staring at?” Rose wants to know. She leans in towards Emma and badly stage whispers “Your sister’s a weirdo.”

“I know,” Emma says with a shrug. “We like to keep her around anyway.”

Mal sits up and her head collides with Dansby’s chin the process. He rubs at it with a hand while Mal rubs her hands together. “Secret Santa?” 

“Do you ever feel like a sixth wheel with these guys?” Emma asks as she sits down between Pat and Dansby on the couch.

“Yep,” he says with a shrug. “And I love every second of it.” He’s looking right at Mal when he says it and Emma laughs at Rose gagging while she heads to the kitchen. 

There are even more decorations in the kitchen. There are string lights along the tops of the cabinets and a miniature tree on the kitchen island. Rose is sitting there trying to open a bottle of champagne that Mal plucks from her hands. 

“This is for dinner.”

Rose snags a freshly-baked gingerbread cookie from the tray in front of her while Mal swats at her hand. “I’m eating. Gimme.”

“No.”

Mal gets into Rose’s space and grabs her wrist to try and wrestle the cookie away from her and color blooms on Rose’s cheeks. She drops the cookie and hops to her feet, spinning around dramatically while clutching the champagne bottle by the neck and brandishing it like a sword. 

“Hey,” she points the bottle towards the doorway. “Where’d that come from?”

Emily looks up. There’s mistletoe dangling from the doorway. Lindsey runs into her from behind because she’s busy trying to catch the final play of a scoring drive on the football game on TV. 

“Whoops. Sorry, Son.”

“Are you apologizing for being a bad kisser?” Rose asks.

“What?”

She points at the mistletoe. It’s Lindsey’s turn to blush. She rubs the back of her neck. “Mal put that up to trap Dansby not for us.”

‘“It’s still tradition,” Rose teases. “Right, Mal?”

Mal glances between Emily and Lindsey and nods solemnly. “It is.”

Sammy walks up behind them and says “If you think that’d be too weird you can kiss me instead.” 

Lindsey looks at Emily. She says “Up to you. I don’t mind.” 

Emily looks over Lindsey’s shoulder at Sam. “Sorry, Sammy. Better luck next time.” Sam shrugs and sidesteps them to get to the cookies. Rose looks scandalized when Mal lets her take one without a fuss.

Lindsey tucks a strand of Emily’s hair behind her ear and leaves her hand on the back of Emily’s head, cradling it. “You can say no, you know. I won’t be offended.”

All Emily says is “You’re a good kisser,” before lurching forward to do it. They fit together in such a perfect way, like that final piece of the puzzle and it’s like no time has passed at all. All of the bullshit and things keeping them apart fade away. Emily doesn’t even hear Rose wolf whistling at them because she’s too busy melting into Lindsey’s kiss, her hand fisting into the front of her sweater.

A tiny noise of complaint drops between them when Lindsey finally breaks the kiss to breathe and Emily can feel her smiling against her mouth. “You good?”

“Get a room,” Rose rolls her eyes at them. “Can we open presents now? I’m bored.”

They all sit around the center island and Emily panics. She knows her gift is too much. She stands up abruptly and announces too loudly that she has to go pee. 

“Right now?” Mal frowns. “We’re about to exchange the gifts.”

“Yeah, just gimme a minute.” She hustles to the stairs and jogs right past the bathroom to duck into her (Rose’s) bedroom. She shoves the gift she bought under her pillow and starts digging through the dresser drawer and bedside table that has been designated as hers looking for something nice but not too obvious. 

Eventually, she decides on the necklace that’s around her own neck. She has to unwrap the ring so she can use the box for it, but the simple, gold chain with a thin gold bar is nice but not as suggestive as the ring she tucks into her pocket is. 

She re-wraps the present hastily with the same paper and makes it back downstairs in record time.

Sammy is holding up a snowglobe from Denver from Mal and Rose has a bottle of tequila courtesy of Sammy in front of her. 

“Okay, so, disclaimer on this,” Rose says as Mal reaches into the plain brown paper bag Rose has handed off. “I bought this for you and me. Don’t take Dansby.”

Mal squeals. “You don’t even like Taylor Swift. Also this definitely goes over the fifty dollar limit.” 

Rose shrugs. “I know a guy.” She pops the champagne and starts pouring out glasses.

“Hey,” Lindsey says when she spots Emily. “Wanna get out of here?”

Mal seems too distracted to care so Emily agrees. She takes Lindsey’s offered hand and lets her hold it while they walk out to the front porch. 

It’s freezing and snow is just starting to fall again. Emily leans into Lindsey as they hurry to her car. Lindsey opens the passenger door for her. Lindsey climbs into the driver’s seat before starting the car and blasting the heat. She holds her hands out to the heater and Emily grabs one of them to hold between both of hers. 

“Me first,” Emily says, shoving the messily wrapped package into Lindsey’s free hand. 

Lindsey smiles at her and Emily can’t help but think it’s a different smile than she uses for anyone else. She’s careful as she tears the paper off of the box and when she notices it’s jewelry, her cheeks turn pink. 

Emily almost wishes she were braver, but the way Lindsey’s eyes light up when she opens the box takes all of that away. 

“This is yours,” Lindsey says as the lets the golden rectangle lay flat in her palm. “You wear this.”

“Yeah,” Emily says with a shrug. “But I thought it’d look better on you.”

“Put it on?” Lindsey asks as she turns in her seat to let her. Emily’s fingers shake a little bit as she does it but she manages to get the clasp on. Lindsey presses the gold bar to her heart and Emily feels like she might pass out.

“Okay your turn.” Lindsey puts the car in drive. Emily looks around. 

“Are you kidnapping me?”

“Yeah. Any last words?”

“Tell Emma I love her.” 

“Will do.” They lapse into silence. Emily is still holding Lindsey’s hand in her lap. Lindsey doesn’t seem to mind. 

They end up outside of a tattoo shop. Lindsey grins when Emily’s mouth pops open. “What do you think about some new ink?”

Emily leans forward. “Only if you get one, too.”

-  
Later, they sneak back into the seemingly empty house. The only lights on are the ones from the Christmas tree. Lindsey thinks they’re going to make it up the stairs without being noticed, but the hallway light snaps on.

“Where’d you guys go?” Rose asks from the kitchen. “You left me with the married couples.”

“Did Mal and Dansby elope?” Emily asks, glancing up at Lindsey. “We weren't gone _ that _ long.”

“They might as well be.” Emily doesn’t miss the edge to Rose’s voice. She flips the light off and heads to the living room, but not before grabbing onto Emily’s shirt sleeve and pulling her along. Because she’s still holding Lindsey’s hand, they move like a line of train cars. 

Rose lets go of Emily so that she can lay on her back on the floor with her head stuck under the Christmas tree. Bagel is on her back on Rose’s left.

“...what are you doing?” Lindsey asks tentatively.

“Lights.”

Lindsey looks at Emily. Emily shrugs and throws herself onto the floor beside Rose. A second later, Lindsey joins her and Ferguson hops off of the couch to nestle himself against Lindsey’s side. 

Rose grabs Emily’s free hand. Emily grabs Lindsey's. 

When Rose brushes her fingertips over Emily’s wrist, Emily holds her breath. Rose rolls onto her side to get a better look.

“What is _ this _?”

“Nothing.”

“Doesn’t look like nothing.” 

“It’s a tattoo. Haven’t you ever seen one before?” 

Rose squints at the ink in the dim light and tries to make out the shape. It’s just a simple semicolon in black ink. Rose nods in approval.

What she can’t see because they’re on opposite sides is that Lindsey’s right wrist has a matching tattoo. Emily traces her fingertips over the fresh ink on Lindsey’s wrist and smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> how am i doing? how are you feeling? 
> 
> i'm at cornerkix_ on twitter if you wanna request


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